a gunboat in a sea of fear
by callmesandy
Summary: Peter's known he is from another universe since his mother confirmed it and he wants to go home. His journey takes him back to Jacksonville where he meets Olivia Dunham again. (AU from Subject 13.)
1. Chapter 1

Notes: Not mine, no profit garnered. Title from Radiohead's the Bends. I tried to be as 90s accurate as I could. Thanks to be the Jam for beta help. I assumed Peter Bishop grew in his adolescence like the actor who played him, so I really have to thank that commenter on celebheights for their detailed estimations of Joshua Jackson's height in every Mighty Ducks movie.

* * *

"But you're not her, are you? You're not my real mother," Peter said.

The woman said, quietly, "No. I'm not."

!

The first time Peter visited his dad at St. Claire's, Walter had been confined there for three weeks. In Peter's estimation, the drugs were kicking in. Peter was only thirteen so he was forced to sit with Walter in a communal room. Peter had hoped to meet with his dad in private, they had serious things to discuss. On the other hand, it was a mental hospital, and people would expect Walter to be spouting what they heard as nonsense. Plus, no one but his mother took Peter seriously. He was a short pudgy kid who looked more like eleven than thirteen.

Peter let Walter hug him. He said, "I know what you did. I know you took me."

"Oh, no," Walter said. "Oh." His fingers twitched and Peter tried not to look. He felt pity and disgust and didn't try to hide it on his face. Walter said, "Your mother told you."

"Yeah," Peter said. "I know all your so-called friends and partners are the kind of people who just look the other way when a kid gets kidnapped. I thought I would give you a try anyway. Especially now."

"Now that I'm here," Walter said.

"Now that you're here, Mom and I are leaving Boston. She's going to help me find a way home," Peter said.

"Oh," Walter said. "Where are you going?"

"Mom said there was a girl in Jacksonville who could travel to the other side. I'm going to figure out how you did that."

Walter nodded. Then he frowned. "She won't remember. We made them not remember. And cortexiphan, son, you have to be careful. It had different effects on people. It didn't seem to have any effect on you."

Peter said, "When did you give me that drug?" He had a pretty good idea, but this was the testing the thesis part of his work. Peter had been working on this problem since he was seven.

"When you were sick," Walter said. "Well, not sick. When you were getting better and I'd cured you, there was still so much damage. C-c-cortexiphan, it has regenerative properties. It did for you. So I shouldn't say it had no effect. But you never developed the kind of abilities we saw in the other children. Of course, we never gave it to you regularly and we never tried to activate you."

Peter nodded. Walter said, "You should be careful. I know Belly's favorite combination, do you need that? I believe he has everything down there locked up."

"That would be helpful," Peter said.

Walter took the pen from Peter's hand and wrote it on Peter's palm. "But you should be careful, Peter, please."

"Careful about Bell? That's my plan," Peter said.

"No, going home. Your father has a darkness in him. I know, I have it, too. But I had friends. I used to have friends? Cannabis. Other wonderful drugs. Your father. He can be a very frightening man."

Peter said, "Like you."

Walter said, "Worse than me, that's why you should be careful. I can be a very bad man."

"Thanks, Walter," Peter said, standing up. "Good advice." He reached over and hugged him. He did love Walter. He loved the man who kidnapped him, who shocked him for weeks in the garage until he told his mom. He remembered this man better than his own father. He said, "Bye, Dad."

Walter said, "Bye, Peter. Bye."

When they first got to Jacksonville, Peter's mom suggested they simply stay in a hotel until they figured out if there was a reason to stay longer. Then she and Peter went into the daycare center and saw all the equipment, boxes and files. She said, "We should rent a trailer. I suppose we should get ready to settle in for a bit."

They were loading everything into a U-Haul when a white security guard came up. He said, "What are you doing?"

"I'm Walter Bishop's wife," she said. "Do you remember him? He sent me to get his research."

It looked like Mom's accent and bearing alone would carry her, but Peter said a plaintive "Mom?" for an extra push. The guard backed down and wished them well.

She rented a nice place with three bedrooms. Peter turned the third one into his workroom. He went through files and set up a lab. Because his mother insisted, Peter made an arrangement with the local high school to take the last three credits he needed to say he was a high school graduate. He didn't really care after that. When he got home, then he'd go to college.

He didn't have to go school to take his classes. His mother said, "I know how important all of this is, Peter, but you should still meet people, make friends."

He went to a garage and a store that fixed appliances and a hardware store and a computer store and he convinced all four to give him jobs under the table. Jacksonville still had mom and pop stores, he didn't think he could have pulled that off at chain stores. He was a little tempted to try. So he met people. He made friends. None of his new friends were his age and most of them were more friendly acquaintances than people he would confide in or something, but he had friends. After two weeks at all four places, he had a month's rent for their house covered.

His mother said, "We should check on that young lady."

"Dad said she wouldn't remember. When he says he did bad things to children, I believe him," Peter said.

"I just want to see if she's doing well," his mother said. "You liked her, too, Peter."

"I know," he said. "That was six years ago." He was ashamed he'd told her to trust Walter, sort of. He felt like his memories of her were surreal or faked somehow.

"Nevertheless, I have looked her up and we're going to visit her tomorrow."

Olivia answered the door. She looked exhausted, pale, harried, and beautiful. Peter's mother said, "I'm sorry to intrude, I don't think you remember me, but you were part of some clinical trials my husband did. I wanted to check that everything was alright."

Olivia stared at the two of them and then said, "I don't remember."

"Do you think your mother might?"

"She's pretty busy," Olivia said. There were two voices from inside and Olivia held the door open.

The house was neat but sad. Sad in the atmosphere, in the air. Peter's house had been like that right before Walter snapped. Olivia's mother was obviously sick and weak. There was a younger girl, probably Olivia's little sister.

"We signed you up for those," Olivia's mother was saying. "You just don't remember."

"Why don't I remember?" Olivia looked angry. Peter wondered if she was going to set the house on fire, but nothing happened.

"You received the money, didn't you, Mrs. Dunham?"

"There was money?" Now Olivia looked even angrier.

"No, no," Mrs. Dunham said weakly. "I don't think there was."

"No," Peter's mother said sadly. "There was compensation, ten thousand dollars from Kelvin Genetics for every year you were in the study. It would have been about thirty thousand dollars. I looked it up on Walter's records." She handed Mrs. Dunham an official looking sheet of paper from her purse.

Olivia sat down next to her mother on their couch and looked at the paper. "He took it," Olivia said. Now she sounded defeated. "He took my money."

"My husband," Mrs. Dunham said.

Peter knew from the look on his mother's face that they were staying and she was going to try to make every single thing better. Peter thought it was a character flaw, the kind of thing that happened to someone who had lived too long with Walter Bishop. He just wanted to go home, he didn't need more people to leave. He would be work out how to do it before he even got attached.

Two hours later, the five of them were sitting down to dinner that Peter's mother had made. Rachel, the little sister, was actually smiling and laughing. Olivia looked cautious. "I have homework," Olivia said, as soon as she finished eating.

"She's taking geometry," Mrs. Dunham said proudly.

"So I really need to study," Olivia said.

"If you need any help," Peter's mother said, "Peter is very good at math."

Olivia had a very pretty look of complete skepticism. Peter said, "I got a 5 on the AP Calculus BC exam last year. I can probably help."

Peter wasn't the greatest teacher but Olivia refused to let go of a question until she had the answer and knew it and could repeat it. He remembered her in that field with the white tulips. She seemed much much older now.

They went back the next day and the day after. They went the week after, and for a whole month. Peter's mother had taken over the Dunhams' lives and none of them minded. Peter didn't mind either, to be completely truthful. He had his jobs, his easy school courses, his endless attempts to understand how Walter had gotten Olivia to be able to cross over. He was teaching himself quantum physics and the effects of all the insane drugs Walter cooked up. It was going to take a while, even for him. It was a depressing realization but all the more reason to get working as soon as possible.

He was home alone one Saturday morning when Olivia came to the door. "Shouldn't you be home?"

"Hi to you, too," Olivia said, coming in the house. She was looking at everything, never meeting Peter's eyes. She was in jeans, like always. He'd never seen her in a skirt. He remembered her in a pretty patterned shirt, but now he only saw her in blue and black and gray. He'd liked her in those bright colors. She said, "The people from the hospice are over today."

"I'm sorry," he said.

Olivia shrugged. She was a more screwed up 13 year old than he was. It was a weird standard to judge someone by. She turned around to face him. "When we met, that I don't remember, did I tell you about my stepfather?"

"Yeah," Peter said. He looked at the floor so he didn't have to see her face. He wasn't committing to this. "He'd hit you." He looked up and she was faking a smile.

"I shot him," Olivia said, chin up like she was expecting a fight.

"Unfortunately, he lived," Peter said. "My mom said you were going to get your money back, though."

"Yeah," Olivia said. "So where's all that stuff you're working on?"

Peter led her into his workroom. She said, "Wow, it's a mad scientist lair."

"I'm trying to recreate one," Peter said.

"Why?"

"To go home," he said. He had promised his mother not to tell anyone and usually it was an easy promise to keep. It felt insane but he wanted Olivia to know. He told her everything he knew.

"That's nuts," she said. She picked up one of Walter's notebooks and started flipping through it. "You're nuts."

"It's true," he said.

"Like me being a firestarter," Olivia said.

"I can prove that you were," Peter said. He had this irresistible urge to make her see the truth. She brought that out in him. He turned on the TV and the betamax player. He showed her the tape of herself when she was just three.

She stared at the tape, at Bell and Walter asking how poor Olive in the corner was. He gripped her shoulder and said, "I'm sorry. I just kind of sprung this on you."

"My fault," Olivia said. She shrugged his hand off. He turned off the tape. "I set things on fire."

"You crossed over, to my side. The way my dad did it sort of broke the universes, but the way you did it, nothing broke," Peter said.

"I can't do it now," she said. She sat down on the floor and covered her face with her hands.

He sat down next to Olivia and rubbed her back. He said, "Did you bike over? There's this ice cream place a few blocks away and I could get you some."

She sat back and he pulled his hand away. She looked at him with watery eyes. She said, "You're going to buy me an ice cream to make me feel better?"

"I could not buy you ice cream and see if that works."

"I like your mother better than you. She's not your mother, though, right?" Olivia sounded more puzzled than mean.

"She's the one I've got," Peter said. "I know it's confusing. In a few months I'll have been here longer than where I'm supposed to be, so... I'm a stranger in a strange universe." He smiled at her like she should know it was a very bad joke. Which was stupid because she'd probably never read the book. He hadn't either, but he knew the title.

"You're paying for that ice cream," Olivia said.

A few weeks later, Mrs. Dunham's sister came to help take care of the girls. Peter turned 14 and didn't have a party, just dinner with his mother. Olivia turned 14 and had a family dinner in the hospice with her mother. He bought her a gift, though. It was a book about the FBI. She talked about working for the FBI all the time.

!

Olivia's mother died. Peter's mother seemed to be in charge of the funeral somehow. The funeral was awful. Peter was wearing his one good suit but he'd gotten it eight months ago. His mother insisted he was growing an inch a month, which was an exaggeration. He was only an inch and a half taller than he'd been before which did not work out to an inch a month at all.

Every pair of nice pants he owned was too short so he looked foolish. He was very conscious of it as he milled around trying to do things. He looked young and useless.

Olivia's mother had been a kind woman. She'd always been sick for as long as he'd known her. She still liked when Peter and Olivia spent time together because Olivia was sometimes happy with him. The first adult Peter knew who'd died was Dr. Warren, Walter's lab assistant. Dr. Warren had been nice to him, too, but she had certainly known Peter had been kidnapped here. She was always distant with Peter, like he was sin personified. He wasn't that taken with her, either.

After the service they went back to the Dunham house. He sat in Rachel's closet with Rachel because Rachel said she wouldn't leave there and the look on Olivia's face said she could not deal with it. He tried to braid Rachel's hair because she asked but he sucked at it. He tried again. He said, "I should be able to get this."

Rachel leaned into his shoulder and said, "Okay, you can go."

"Are you coming?"

"I'm staying," Rachel said.

"I'll come check in with you," he said, meaning it.

Then he walked around looking for Olivia and ignoring everyone else. He found her in the backyard. "Are you cold?" He held out his suit coat.

Olivia took it and put it on. "Thanks," she mumbled. He hoped it didn't smell bad.

"It's warmer inside," he said, like an idiot. He sat down next to her on the plastic bench.

He was fidgeting when Olivia grabbed his hand. He was about to apologize for everything he'd done ever when she kissed him. She kissed him on the lips. He didn't know what to do with his hands or his face.

Olivia pulled back and clasped her hands together in her lap. He said, "What was that?"

Olivia looked up at him like he was a huge asshole which he certainly was. "I mean," he said. "I like you, I even like you that way."

She said, "Even like that?"

"Yes," he said. It was a bad time to figure out this feeling that made him want to stay, but he had the feeling, and he wasn't about to lie to Olivia.

"I wanted one nice thing for today," Olivia said.

"We can do it again, then," he said. She didn't take him up on it.

The next time they kissed was three weeks later. Olivia came over again on a Saturday. She said, "Tell me what you're doing, what was done to me."

He started walking her through what he understood of Walter and Bell's theories about cortexiphan and experimenting on children. He gave her her own file to look at. She just put it aside. "What are you planning to do?"

"I think I've finally figured out how to synthesize cortexiphan and how to get all the ingredients. Then I think there's a way to activate people again. Walter has some notes about it."

"You're just going to experiment on yourself?"

"I guess," he said. "I don't want to hurt anyone. My dad experimented a lot on mice but that grosses me out. I don't have the right temperament. The effects of the cortexiphan vary on people, but I was thinking since I'm from the other side, maybe it will help get me home like it helped you cross over."

She was standing right in front of him. He reached out and fingered the hem of her over-sized sweater. It was like pulling her close but creepier, he thought. He was always an idiot or creepy around her. She grabbed both of his hands and this time he kissed her. She was wearing some kind of lip gloss. She stepped back, almost backing into a stack of boxes. She said, "I'd do it."

"Olivia," he said. "It's probably incredibly dangerous. I mean really dangerous."

She shrugged. "But you're going to do it."

"But you're -"

"A girl?" She crossed her arms.

"Yeah, but I was going to say you're more important than me."

Olivia looked at him like he'd grown five heads. She said, "What does that mean?"

"I feel like you're more important than me. You matter. I'm not even supposed to be here, but you are. You have Rachel."

She convinced him somehow. Mostly she kept asking and he couldn't think of a reason why not in the face of her and her lip gloss. He had started to think of Olivia as an irresistible force. He was not an immovable object capable of saying no to her.

It was another two weeks before they kissed again. He went over to her house and she said cheerfully, "We're alone for an hour or two."

He sat down next to her on the couch and before he could ask what that meant, she was kissing him. With tongue. They were making out. Like the guys at the garage and the appliance store were always talking about, though they probably weren't keeping their hands to the girl's knees. They were all at least 5 years older than him. It was already his favorite thing to do, probably. Olivia was definitely his favorite person in the world.

Rachel banged the front door as she came in and he and Olivia were immediately on opposite sides of the couch. Rachel said, "I'm going to my room to watch TV."

Peter kept his hands to himself and over his lap. He said, "Is there a kissing schedule?" Olivia looked at him like he was an idiot, which was accurate. "I mean," he said, "Are we going out? Dating? I like all of this, I promise, I like to know when to expect it next."

Olivia said, "We are definitely not going out or dating. My aunt says Rachel and I can't date until we're 15. So whatever this is, it is definitely not dating." She had a sly smirk on her face.

"So when are we not dating next?"

"I guess when we're alone next," Olivia said.

"Don't feel like we have to or anything," Peter said. "I want to, because you're beautiful and amazing, but my mother makes me watch every single special aired on date rape and read every single article. She annotates them. No means no."

"Okay," she said, fidgeting.

"I'll be here the morning you turn 15 to actually officially ask you out," he said.

She kissed his cheek as she got up and went to the kitchen.

They'd been making out on a pretty regular basis for two months when Peter finally had his cortexiphan ready. He was all set up to try the activation procedure Walter had outlined. He handed Olivia her two bags. "What is in these?" She huffed as she put on the backpack.

"Monitors," Peter said. "Walter had ones here but they're way too bulky to move so I made my own. I have the first aid kit and defibrillator."

"That's cool," Olivia said. "Why are we not doing it here?"

"Sometimes people start fires," Peter said. "I don't want to burn the house down. You may have noticed there are a lot of flammable things in my lair."

"Of course," Olivia said.

They biked to a relatively off the beaten path dead field. Peter said, "I'm first."

"Why?"

"Well, if I die, then you don't have to do it," he said. He set everything up, directing Olivia to turn on the mini generator. Then he sat down on one of the blankets he brought. "Okay, you're going to need to put in these IVs."

She pressed her lips together and knelt down next to him. She didn't have the steadiest hand but it wasn't too painful. She said, "You can miss a vein once or twice when it's my turn."

"I'm not going to do that," he said. "Okay, I'll walk you through the drugs and then woosh." He flapped his hands vaguely.

"What happens?"

"The drugs create an obstacle for me, I do stuff, then I can set you on fire," he said, smiling.

"Or go home," she said, seriously.

"Maybe," he said. He put another blanket over himself and laid down.

"Why the second blanket?"

Peter frowned. "Walter refers to possible involuntary physical reactions."

"Like you piss your pants?" Olivia grinned.

"Hopefully not," he said.

Then the drugs hit. It was a rush and horrible and Peter would never understand his dad's deep love for LSD, he just felt like there were more people than he could see and all of them were staring at him.

He climbed a wall made of skeletons, crying at touching the bones and the harsh wind against him. He reached the top and threw himself over into nothingness.

He landed with a thump and sat up. Olivia was sitting next to him and she reached for his face. "So it's upsetting," she said.

He said, "I guess," and realized Olivia was wiping tears from his eyes. He said, "No need for a diaper for me, though." He stayed sitting up with the blanket over his lap because he had another involuntary physical reaction.

Olivia removed the sensors and needles. She said, "What do I do with these?"

He kept seeing things right at the edge of his vision. He said, "Gimme a minute," and waved his hand at them. Everything flew out of Olivia's hand and both of their bikes fell over.

"Oh," Olivia said. "I guess it worked."

Peter rubbed his forehead. Then he tried to wave everything back in place and nothing moved. "That one time," he said.

He stood up and started cleaning up everything by hand. Olivia rolled up the blankets. He said, "Do you still want to do it?"

"Apparently I can turn out to be a superhero, so sure," she said. She looked pale, though.

"You really don't have to," he said. "It's pretty horrible. I can't believe my dad did that to you when you were just three."

"I want to help," Olivia said. "I can handle it."

"Next weekend, okay?"

She nodded. She insisted they stop at a McDonald's and watched him closely as he ate. "I'm not going to start crying again," he said.

"I know," she said. "I just want to make sure you're okay."

Try as he might all week, he couldn't make anything move with his mind. He read over Walter's notes to see if there were tips or anything, but of course, Walter had just been telling little kids to imagine things. That wouldn't work on Peter. His brain didn't work that way anymore if it ever had.

Between working, trying to replicate his one superhero moment and general worry, Peter was so exhausted he fell asleep on Olivia's bed Friday afternoon. He'd been reading a book while she did her homework. He woke up and didn't open his eyes. He could hear Olivia and her aunt hissing outside the door. Or talking, he thought. Olivia's aunt was saying that she didn't like how much that boy was around, and he was nice but he was also too mature to hang out with Olivia. Olivia was objecting, he was pretty sure. She thought he was an idiot.

He had to stop pretending to be asleep when Olivia's aunt came in and gently shook him. She said, "I'm sure your mother wants you home for dinner."

He realized Olivia had actually put a blanket over him. He smiled the whole way outside.

Olivia followed him out and stood next to him as he got on his bike. He said, "So you still want to do it tomorrow?"

"Of course," Olivia said. "I'll be there. It's just so stupid. I wish she'd just say I don't want you to have sex with him and not make up excuses."

"Right," Peter said. "If only adults were more plain spoken."

He was as good at not thinking about sex and Olivia as he was at making things move with his mind. He didn't try as hard with the first one.

Then it was Olivia's turn to take the cortexiphan. She was definitely nervous as he hooked everything up. She also said if he asked her one more time if she wanted to do this she would punch him in his stupid face.

He watched the monitors closely but it was hard to know how things were going in her head. She didn't speak or move, though her closed eyes twitched.

She gasped and sat up. He crouched down next to her and said, "Are you okay?"

Olivia nodded and started plucking at the wires and needles. "Let me do that," he said. "Did you want to tell me what you saw?"

"You first," Olivia said. He just went on detaching the sensors. He didn't know why he didn't want to tell her, but he knew he was still having nightmares and he didn't want to say any of it out loud and invite more. He also didn't want those images in Olivia's mind.

"Why are you glowing?" Olivia looked confused, squinting at him.

"That's great," Peter said. "That means it worked. My dad said when you saw things from the other side, you would say they glimmered."

Olivia pulled the blanket closer to her chest. "Does that help you get home?"

"We'll see," he said. "Now I'm taking you to McDonald's to watch you eat." He still didn't get even a hint of smile from her.

The guys at the garage always gave him hell about Olivia. She had come by once and he had kissed her as she left. Since then, they asked him every time he showed up if he and the pretty blonde had done it yet. Like he was having sex at 14. He was shorter than everyone who worked there and he was sure they said it just to tease him.

He felt comfortable admitting to himself that he was perfectly fine with just heated kissing. He wasn't ready to jump ahead for once, not at 14.

Trying to read Olivia was especially irritating the week after Olivia's cortexiphan since he'd barely seen her. She was always busy or needed to do homework without any distraction. He was sure she was avoiding him, which was completely unfair since she offered to do the cortexiphan. She practically forced him to give it to her.

At the first "Got in her pants yet?" from the garage guys he turned from the car with the electrical system he was trying to repair. Peter said, "How far into anyone's pants were you when you were 14?"

Jesse grinned. "I was still a virgin, but I'd gotten a few great handjobs."

One of the other guys insisted he wasn't a virgin at 14 but Peter thought he was lying, and Jesse's expression made it clear he agreed with Peter.

"So your girlfriend was just -" Peter made a gesture.

"I had to guide her hand there, but she wasn't upset," Jesse said.

"If I guided Olivia's hands anywhere, my mother would somehow know and probably beat me silly," Peter said. "Drown me in a vat of tea, maybe."

He didn't talk about Olivia to the owner of the hardware store since the owner was a woman, and a friend of Olivia's aunt from their church. Peter knew it was a stereotype but he strongly suspected the owner of the computer store had done less with girls than Peter had. He basically never talked to anyone at the appliance store except two of the saleswomen, and they were both women. He craved a peer group to hang out with but as always, there wasn't one.

Peter biked over to Olivia's Saturday afternoon. It was overcast and the air felt heavy. Olivia evidently saw him so she came out on the porch to wait for him. He said, "You're mad at me, aren't you?"

Olivia said, "Yes, I guess."

"Okay, that's not fair. You asked over and over again to do the cortexiphan, that's not fair to get mad at me about that," he said.

"I'm not mad at you about that," she said, frowning.

"What did I do?" He crossed his arms and stood straight so he was looking down at her.

Olivia said, loudly, "You, you can't say stuff about how you're going to be there on my birthday when I'm 15 and then where will you be when I'm 16? You just want to go home, what's even the point?"

Peter stopped himself from shouting at her. He said, "What are you talking about? You don't think I should want to go home? Imagine if you hadn't seen Rachel since you were seven, wouldn't you want her to try and get home to you?"

The lights on the porch and the one over the garage were all flickering. Olivia said, "Is one of us doing that?"

Peter said, "I don't care." One of the streetlights turned on and blew out. "Are you really mad at me for wanting to go home?"

"You're just using me," she said. "You just came here to use me to get home to your side."

The garage light blew out with a shower of sparks. Peter said, "I didn't even want to see you when we came here. We moved here because this is where the daycare was. My mother wanted to check on you. How could I be using you?"

Olivia said, "That's nice, you didn't even want to see me."

Peter said, as two of the porch lights blew out with sparks flying out everywhere, "You can't have it both ways. Either I'm using you or I'm some asshole who is, what? Pretending to like you before I go home?"

Olivia walked off the porch and stomped out some of the sparks that were glowing on the lawn. "Fine, I'm an idiot. Can you go now?"

"Absolutely," he said. The streetlights flickered the whole way home so apparently he'd been responsible for the fireworks at Olivia's. When he tried to turn his lamp on in his bedroom, it didn't work at all, so it was another useless side effect of cortexiphan.

He was miserable for a week. His mother said he should talk to Olivia instead of yelling at her which made him mad all over again. Olivia was the one being stupid, not him.

Friday he was at the garage when Jesse came around behind him and said, "Hey, Bishop, about your pretty blonde -"

Peter said, as he turned around, "No, I have not gotten in her pants, I will never get in her pants since she dumped me -" And there she was standing behind Jesse, her tan sweater a shade lighter than Jesse's grinning face.

Jesse laughed at him and thankfully walked away.

Olivia actually smiled at him. She said, "Can we talk outside?"

"Sure," he said. "Sorry."

"I went by all your jobs today and yesterday, of course you're at the last one I check," Olivia said. She walked her bike alongside them.

"I'm sorry if I've been a jerk to you," Peter said.

"I was just, it was a bad week, sorry," Olivia said. "I was just angry at the world and you were there."

"Okay," he said. "I am a tall target. Taller than you."

She had a small smile. She put her hands on his chest and kissed him. She said, "Your friends are watching if you wanted to try to get into my pants or something."

"No, the point is I'm not trying," he said. "I'm okay with no pants action right now. My mother thinks I should tell you that all the time."

She moved his hand at her waist down to her butt. She kissed him again and he did actually pull her a little closer with a strong grip on her butt. She laughed very softly against his neck and stepped back. "I think the light thing was me."

"It was me," Peter said. "It followed me home."

"The lights kept flickering in the house after I went inside," Olivia said.

"Okay, so it was both of us. I guess we have some overlap," he said. "But we don't have to, you don't have to help me, you know."

"It's okay," Olivia said.

Now that he and Olivia were back on, he didn't mind at all how time seemed to move so slowly that summer. He and Olivia barely worked on the cortexiphan abilities they both seemed to have sporadically. They sat together and watched movies from Blockbuster at his house or hers. They watched every Wes Craven movie they could find there. Then they got random. Peter would close his eyes and Olivia would drag him around the store and then tell him to point. There were a lot of random awful movies at their Blockbuster.

They made out chastely. Olivia was always the one who pressed closer.


	2. Chapter 2

The Saturday after Peter turned 15, his mother picked the drive to the mall to have the sex talk with him. She said it just like that, "Now that you're 15, we should talk about sex."

He rubbed his chin and said nothing.

She said, "I'm sure your father went over the mechanics in more detail than you needed."

Peter said, "Yes. We did a puzzle of a playmate. When I was 12, he told me not to use porn or anything men made as a guide to what women want. He said how to please a woman, actually. Dad said the real resource I should trust was lesbian erotica."

His mother burst out laughing. "That sounds just like Walter. It's not entirely wrong. What I want you to understand is that it's different for girls. It's harder. They're told not to want to sex, to protect themselves, their virginity is something someone takes. I know you feel pressure, too. I expect you to treat everyone with respect. I expect you to understand that sometimes girls feel they can't say no, so it is incumbent on you to make sure you are never putting a girl in that situation. I expect you to be a decent person, Peter. A good one."

"Okay," he said, nodding his head. "I understand."

"I hope you do," she said. "You should always remember that just because someone says yes one time, that is not yes for every time after. A girl can say yes to doing something but that does not mean she is saying yes for every time you want her to do that something. You've seen those stories about date rape."

"Yes," he said, offended. "Mom, I would not —"

"You will not. Because you will remember that we had this talk and you will not think no means yes, or silence means yes. You understand, Peter?"

"Yes," he said. "You are really serious about this."

"It's very important," his mother said. "If you do not take this seriously, you could hurt someone very badly."

"I would not," he said. "I'm not planning to have the sex at the movies with Olivia and Rachel."

She smiled at him. "The time to talk about this is before you make plans."

"Then never again?"

She smiled again. "I hope we can talk about everything."

!

He met Rachel in front of the movie theater. She hugged him and said, "Happy birthday, Peter."

"Thank you," he said. "I'm glad you could come."

Rachel snorted. She said, "Olivia is coming, she just had to make a stop." Then she smirked. "Don't tell her I told you, but she went to Bloomingdale's to put on some makeup. Because she likes you."

He said, "I won't tell."

Olivia showed up a few minutes later. He wouldn't have guessed she had makeup on but she looked very pretty. She gave him his wrapped present, which looked like a book just like Rachel's present. Everyone got him books this year. Olivia stepped closer. "Don't tell," she said to Rachel, and then she kissed him. He really liked kissing her. He tasted lipstick instead of lip gloss.

Rachel said, "Okay, time to get tickets."

"You guys don't mind seeing The Fugitive again?"

"I've never seen it," Rachel said. "You and Olivia went without me."

"We're not going without you this time," Peter said.

Rachel sat on one side and Olivia on the other. They ate all of a large popcorn and even Rachel finished her huge Coke. After the movie, Rachel said she wanted to go to Claire's before they had to leave so she left them alone. "That's her second present," Olivia said. They made out in front of Dalton Books. Someone Olivia knew from her school said, "Hi Olivia," really obnoxiously, so Olivia pulled back.

Olivia said "hi" with a smirk and the girl left. "It's time to go, let's get Rachel."

Olivia's aunt picked up the girls before Peter's mom came. Olivia's aunt said, "Happy birthday" and he said "thank you."

He added, "15 is kind of a dull one, though. No driver's license, no R-rated movies, just halfway to thirty."

Olivia's aunt smiled. She said, "You graduated high school last year —"

"You did?" Rachel leaned over from the passenger side. "Why didn't you have a party?"

"It wasn't that exciting," Peter said. "Not to me."

Olivia made a face making fun of him. Olivia's aunt said, "Why not college?"

"Honestly," he said, "I'm tired of being the youngest person in class. I was eleven when I started high school, when I was twelve, I was nearly a senior. What I really want for college is to not be the youngest person in my class by three or four years."

Olivia's aunt nodded. "That makes a lot of sense."

He used to think he'd go to college when he got home, now he barely remembered what colleges his father had been grooming for when he was six. He wasn't working at getting home and by the time he did, if he did, he'd be at the stage where he would be ready for college. Hopefully.

!

The morning of Olivia's birthday, Peter called her in the morning. "Thank you for being the one who answered," Peter said to Olivia.

"I think you said something about being here in person," Olivia said. She sounded like she might be smiling.

"Do you want to go on a date? With me? Go out?" He sounded ridiculous.

She still said yes. She said she'd talk to her aunt about a suitable first date. Peter was pretty sure it would be chaperoned, in a public place, and possibly involve an entire church group following them around. Olivia's aunt wasn't a bad person, but she really wanted to raise Olivia in some version of ye olde times where girls had to be protected from boys' evil urges.

His mother was waiting for him when he got home from that day's work. She said, "So you have a date."

"Did you and Olivia's aunt negotiate what we're allowed to do?"

"Don't take that tone with me," his mother said, though she didn't sound so mad. "I don't think Olivia's aunt is as ignorant as you think she is of all your furtive kissing."

He glared at her. She said, "You two can go to a movie on Friday and have dinner beforehand at the mall."

"That's so great," he said darkly. "Since I've declared my intentions, am I still allowed to hang out with her between dates?"

"Peter," his mother said. "Think about it from her aunt's point of view. Olivia has had a lot to contend with. Her aunt is trying to protect her. Yes, you may hang out with her after school but only at her home when her aunt is there or here when I am home."

Peter nodded and went back to his lair. He had an idea about controlling their cortexiphan abilities, or training themselves to control them. He felt a rush of guilt reading over Walter's notes about Olivia's crossing over, like he always did. Now he felt guilty because he would be leaving her.

Friday seemed to come very slowly. It wasn't really a first date, he and Olivia had been making out for months. It was still a real date. After a half hour of trying to figure out what to wear, he begged his mother to call her and find out if Olivia was dressing up. "Define dressing up," his mother said, smiling.

"Is she wearing a skirt? Nice pants? I don't want to show in jeans and a tee shirt and make her feel overdressed."

His mother gave him the same look she'd given him when he was nine and drew her a Mother Day's bouquet. Peter went back to his room before she pinched his cheeks. She knocked on the door ten minutes later and said, "She is apparently planning to wear a skirt."

He put on his new pair of dark blue pants that weren't jeans and were almost too long for him ("They won't be in two months," his mother had said, sighing), nice shoes and a button down shirt. "Shit," he said as he walked out. "Was I supposed to get flowers? Should I?"

"Don't swear," his mother said. "I'm driving you over there so if we leave now, we can stop by the florist." She had the pinch his cheeks at any minute look again.

Olivia blushed and had a genuine smile on her face when she saw the flowers so Peter counted that as a win. They ate at the Bennigan's at the mall, which was crowded with mostly adults. Olivia kept smiling and playing with her hair. "It's kind of weird, though, right?" Peter said.

"What?"

"It's weird that we were already basically dating but this feels different. Right?"

Olivia shrugged. "We weren't dating, we were more like hanging out."

"True," Peter said. "I like it, though."

She told him about her week at school and stories about her classmates being dumb. It was good he didn't go to her school so they had things to talk about. Again, he thought, weird, because they never really had a hard time talking when they were hanging out but now it was dating and there was a certain new pressure.

He paid for dinner and tipped 22% because the waitress hadn't called them cute, unlike the hostess.

They were sitting in the movie theater with their large popcorn and large drinks and Olivia's flowers on her lap. The movie hadn't started. Olivia said, "The first time I went to the movies with my mom, I think I was six? We were sitting there like we are, and they had that curtain. And I said, 'this is the best movie ever.' That was so much fun."

He held her hand and kissed her cheek. "That sounds fun," he said. Peter tried to remember his first movie, he thought it must have been when he was home. His real mother had taken him. If he thought about it, he remembered the theater being different from the ones here. It was the first time in weeks he'd thought about his real family and he was already wincing a little at how wrong it felt to call them the real family. He wondered what his mother would have said to him when he had his first date.

He looked over at Olivia and felt like an asshole, making everything about himself. He said, "Do you remember what movie it was?"

"I don't," Olivia said. "I remember the curtain and my mom laughing and being happy I go to go and Rachel didn't."

Peter laughed at that. He snorted unattractively. He was really lucky Olivia put up with him.

After the movie they had about ten minutes before Olivia's aunt came to take them both home. She leaned against the wall in the parking lot and he kissed her, holding her waist. She pressed closer to him, rubbing his shoulder. He said, "Keep an eye out for your aunt." He kissed her neck and jaw, and touched her above the waist for once. She giggled when he touched her breast. He said, "Sorry, was that okay?"

"Totally okay," she said. "But I see her car," Olivia said. She stepped away from him and straightened her shirt.

They went to the roller rink next, and bowling. Then they went back to the movies. They had a circuit of approved places to go. The guys at the garage were always saying he must enjoy the kisses goodbye the most, but he actually liked all of it. He was better at roller skating than Olivia which was not something he normally got to say. She was naturally coordinated in a way Peter wasn't.

Sometimes they would see kids Olivia knew from school. He knew from talking to her she didn't have close friends, just people she hung out with. He worried he had made her weirder with all his cortexiphan experiments. Maybe he was getting in the way of her having really good friends.

He didn't have any really close friends, either. A lot of people liked him, and he liked them, liked talking to them, but it wasn't like it was with Olivia or his mom or even Rachel.

After they'd been dating for six weeks, he was ready to show her his cortexiphan techniques. "Techniques?" Olivia raised an eyebrow. "That's a weird way to talk about it."

"That's the thing, though, cortexiphan works on perception. If we want to stop the involuntary effects where we fight and make lights go out all over town, we have to train our perceptions."

"Okay," Olivia said. She looked skeptical.

"Naturally, Walter and Bell were focused on doing that with young kids."

Olivia interrupted. "Did I tell you I started to remember? Ever since the cortexiphan, some of it's coming back to me."

He said, "No, you hadn't told me, but that's good."

"It doesn't help me do anything better," Olivia said.

"You know the idea of heart and mind, feelings and thinking, as separate things is a specific mindset of Western thought. I can go into more detail if you want —"

"No," Olivia said.

"Right, but I've found if I change my perception, stop thinking of how to channel my feelings and instead realize that thinking and feeling are all happening in the brain, I can start to have some control." He held up a scarf of his mother's and then pulled his hand away. He stopped it before it fell to the floor with his mind.

"That's cool," Olivia said. "I don't get what you're saying, though."

"It's like, your feelings don't come from your heart. Your heart is a muscle. Your feelings and your thoughts come from your brain." The scarf fell to the ground. "I'm not saying it's totally working but I thought it might if we did it together."

Olivia nodded. She didn't get it but after an hour they were both pushing the scarf around the floor. When they held hands, they could get the scarf to twirl and dance around the room. Olivia laughed, and kissed his cheek. They started making out. She said, "Whoa." He turned to look and the scarf was shredding itself and floating in a ball.

"Wow," Peter said. The scarf fell on the ground in tens of pieces. "My mom is not going to be happy."

"Next time we use a paper towel?"

Peter rigged up a box of light bulbs and they took turns turning them all on and turning them off. He'd seen something like that in the daycare boxes.

"Do you still see me glimmer?"

Olivia said, "Not often."

Peter said, "When do you see it,?" They were at the roller rink, Peter pulling Olivia along with him. He really enjoyed how much better he was at this than her.

"When I'm angry at you," she said, frowning. "Like now, when you're being smug."

"Other times?"

She shrugged. It was like pulling teeth to get Olivia to say anything. So he guessed. "When you're scared?"

She shrugged again. That was a yes shrug.

"Okay, we need to find another way to do that then. I can't just jump out behind corners at you and scream boo," he said.

"That doesn't sound scary, that sounds ridiculous," she said.

"Right," he said. They made-out outside the rink for ten minutes before her aunt came.

Olivia was getting good at her cortexiphan abilities, faster than he was. He hated himself when he realized how much like Walter and Bell he sounded when he noted that about her. She was the strongest one. She was always better when they tried to do things together.

Peter's abilities by themselves weren't that much. He could move things with his mind, but not things that were farther than five feet away from him, and not very heavy things.

!

Before Thanksgiving, Peter woke up at somewhere around eleven p.m. to a steady, light knocking on his window. He thought woodpecker which made no sense but when he opened his eyes it was Olivia. He thought that almost made less sense. He opened the window, though, and helped her get in and on his bed.

"Hi," she said. She toed off her shoes and unbuttoned her jeans, sliding them down her legs.

"Hi," he said. "You're here." His voice had suddenly got high. Other parts of him were rising. Olivia sat next to his hip and pulled off her shirt. "Hey," he said. "You're so pretty."

She smiled as she looked down. She pulled back the covers and lay down next to him. "I thought we could do something tonight."

"Not all the things?"

"No, not sex," she said. She was already pulling down his boxers.

"Oh," he said. "Okay."

When she was done with him and he was done touching her - he didn't think either of them had enough experience to try things at the same time - he laid there for a moment listening to his own heartbeat in his ears. "Get you clean," he mumbled as he got up and went to his own bathroom.

Then they were just in his bed, naked and touching. She said, "What did you say when you, um, came?" She closed her eyes when she said it, like it was the only way she could say the words.

He said, "I love you, Olive," and then, quickly, "Sorry, I shouldn't call you that."

"It's okay," she said. "I like it from you." She had such a beautiful, warm expression on her face.

She said, "Wake me up if I'm not up by four am, okay."

When he woke up at 3:45 am from his alarm, she was already gone.

He biked by her house the next day. Olivia came out on the porch. She said, "I can't talk long. My aunt is inside and she says we already spend enough time together."

"I think she's wrong," Peter said, quietly. "I just wanted to see how you are today."

"I'm good," she said, smiling at him. "Thank you for checking."

She came by the next night, again at eleven p.m. They did the same things, but were already better at it, in Peter's opinion. She came again two nights later. He didn't even wait for her to get her underwear off before pushing his hand between her legs and kissing her hard.

After five times, he would admit he was worried. He'd been reading a lot of psychology texts on teenagers and he wondered if he would be the mistake Olivia was confessing to in therapy in ten years. He decided to talk to her. Naturally he approached it all wrong. First he biked over to her house and had to talk on the porch again.

"I don't think you should be biking so much at night," Peter said. "What about criminals?"

"There are no criminals skulking at the elementary school," Olivia said, frowning. "Not even that late at night."

"Serial killers," Peter said. "It was only a few years ago that there were a serial killer less than an hour away."

"Gainesville is farther than an hour," Olivia said. "Do you not want me to come over?" Her arms were crossed and that was definitely a defensive Olivia stance.

"I do, I love spending time with you. Doing that," he said. "But, Olivia, I know it's been almost exactly a year since your mother died. I'm just worried -"

"You think I'm acting out? Being a slut because she died?"

"I don't think you're a slut, I would never use that word about you," Peter said. "I don't want to be something you regret."

"Instead you're just going to be someone I miss and will never see again when you go home," Olivia said. She bit her lip and he was suddenly afraid she might cry. "Look, everybody sees me as like, as just one thing. Poor orphan, super big sister, stand-offish snob. I like the way you look at me. I just, I need you to be my 15 year old boy boyfriend, okay? That's what I need."

Peter stepped closer and put his hand over hers. He said, "Fifteen year old boy boyfriend would totally be worried about serial killers, though."

She actually laughed. "Okay." She looked over her shoulder and then back at him. "Okay, you can come over tonight. Watch for serial killers, they like little boys."

"I'm taller than you," he said.

"Yeah, you're 5'6", that's scary," she said, smirking at him.

He armed himself with a homemade flare gun when he biked over.

They kept going faster. A week of using their hands was followed by two weeks of hands and mouth and tongue. He was comfortable with all of it. He loved touching her naked thighs, her breasts, her butt. He loved making her happy and she was always very clear when she was happy, the only time he could say that about Olivia.

"You do that more to me than I do it to you," Olivia said, letting go of his hair.

He said, "I like this more than you like doing that."

Olivia said, "I don't get why, it's gross down there."

"Walter always said our bodies are beautiful. Especially women's bodies. He would go into a lot of detail," Peter said. "Anyway, you're not gross. Nothing about you is gross."

"Sometimes, you glimmer," she said, quietly.

He sat up. "Not when you're scared or angry, but when you're happy?"

"Yeah," she said. "You're excited about that?"

"I know we've been pretty focused on other things, but it's good to figure out," he said.

"So you can leave," she said.

"Olivia," he said. He kissed her and reached for her breasts. "Olivia," he said. "Please don't look at it like that."

"Please don't feel me up to make me feel better," she said, pulling back.

They spent another month of pretty chaste dates and getting to second and third base every few nights at his place or hers. It was a very heady feeling, being with her like that. Sometimes he'd lie next to her and just look. She was so pretty. She would just shake her head at him and press up close to him.

They were sitting in his lair playing with the lightbox. It had gotten pretty easy which Peter thought was progress. "And when you're angry, you're not blowing out lights, right?" Peter got up and looked over his notes.

"No, no involuntary reactions," she said.

"Do you ever see anything glimmer?"

"Just you," she said. "And sometimes that doll."

He grabbed the doll. "This one? When?"

"Sometimes," she said.

"I'm not trying to make you feel bad," he said. "It's just helpful to figure out how it works."

"Does anything ever glimmer for you?"

"No, I think if I saw glimmers it would be on everything since I'm not from here," he said. "According to Walter's notes, you're the only one who was ever able to see the other side, or go there."

"I feel special," she said.

He sat down on the floor with her. "Maybe you could teach me how to do it," he said.

She took his hand and stared at him. "Am I glimmering now?"

She shook her head. "I have no idea what I'm doing."

"It's like the light bulbs or moving things. Visualize, perceive," he said. He squeezed her hand.

"You can say a bunch of words at me, I don't think it helps," she said, with an almost smirk.

"Okay, I'm going to think of all the systems of the body from my eyes to my hand to your hand and your eyes," he said, thinking out loud. "Why don't you remember how you felt sometimes when I glimmered?"

She nodded again. She was always very determined. He visualized like he told Olivia he would. He focused on it with the absence of effort that he found worked best to get things done.

Olivia breathed out. For a split second, he saw himself, glimmering. Then his hand flared in pain and he pulled away. Both he and Olivia had bright red welts where they had touched. "I think that worked," she said.

"It did," he said, smiling.

"You couldn't read my mind, right?"

"No, I just saw through your eyes. What did you feel?"

"I felt you pressing against the back of my eyes," she said. "I think that's why our hands were on fire, I was trying to get you out," she said, looking at her hand.

"It's okay," he said.

"I don't want you reading my mind," she said.

"I don't think I can," he said, trying to soothe her. "Clearly you'd have to let me. I can probably only do it with you. If I'm reading Walter's notes right about bonds and partners."

"Nick," she said. "My partner was Nick."

"Yeah," Peter said. He smiled. "You are remembering stuff."

She nodded. "So do you see the glimmers now?"

He looked around, thinking about how the eyes took in information and how the brain processed it, and visualized seeing more. For a split second everything except for the doll looked ghostly, then his head hurt so much he squeezed his eyes close. "Okay, that worked. Sort of."

"I'll get you some aspirin," Olivia said.

He knew it was coming, but he was still surprised when she came over one night in February and put a condom on the blanket. He said, "Are you sure?"

Olivia glared at him. "Yes, I'm sure."

"I just want to be clear," Peter said.

"I want you," she said. "I want to do it with you."

He smiled like an idiot. He knew it was a big big event but he didn't want to do it with anyone, he wanted to do it with Olivia and he was. He loved her. He was almost positive she loved him. He felt ready and she was the one who was saying they should, so she felt ready, too.

It was awkward and then it was better and then it was better for him. He tried to make it better for her. Olivia laid on her back, looking at the ceiling. He said, "Was that okay?"

"Yeah," she said. "Yeah." She turned on her side to smile at him. "We should do that again."

"Not tonight," he said.

"No," she said. He fell asleep with his arm around her and woke up an hour later and she was gone.

He biked to her school the next morning. He waited until her aunt dropped off and then went over to her. "Hi," he said.

She shook her head but she smiled at him. "You love the morning check-in."

"And you," he said, like a complete moron.

"You said that last night," she said, still smiling.

He leaned over and kissed her. Then he took her hand and tried to visualize a warm glow. She blinked a few times and said, "What was that?"

"I tried to send you a warm glow," he said.

"I liked it, doofus," she said. She kissed his cheek.

He loved the sex. He thought about it all the time. He kept checking that Olivia still liked it, so much so she rolled her eyes when he asked. They managed three or four nights a week sneaking into each other's house. They went on dates that Olivia's aunt would approve of. They sat in his lair and tried to hone their powers. After the initial success, they didn't make much more progress. It was all starts and stops which Peter thought was to be expected. It wasn't a high enough priority for either of them to push steadily. It should have been for him, but he liked his life. He shouldn't, he thought sometimes. He wasn't supposed to be here.

!

In late March, Peter was sitting at the computer store, reading usenet groups. He had the thought that he'd managed to see the glimmer through Olivia, he might be able to see through to the other side. He got up and stood at the counter, watching their one customer browse. The owner of the store was on his computer next to the cash register, also reading usenet groups. Peter tried first to see the glimmer, and then he did. He tried to see the other side, his home, passing through the space. It was nothing but glimmer for a minute but then he saw shapes forming, a different type of store surrounding him. Domesticated badgers, he saw.

He saw nothing but white and woke up on the floor with his boss, paler than normal, standing over him. He said, "Peter, Peter."

"I'm okay," Peter said. He tried to sit up and couldn't.

"You're not okay," his boss said. "You're bleeding from your ears and nose, your eyes are bloodshot. I'm calling an ambulance."

"And my mom," Peter murmured before passing out again.

He woke up in the hospital with doctors over him. And a nurse, and his mother. He answered their questions. He kept repeating he felt much better. They did tests. Hours later, Peter saw his mother talking to the doctor. Then she came back into his room. "They're keeping you overnight," she said. "They think you had a stroke, a very minor one, but one nevertheless. Will you tell me what really occurred?"

He told her that he and Olivia had taken the cortexiphan and had been honing their abilities. "I just pushed too far, Mom. It wasn't a stroke," he said. "Even if it was, cortexiphan regenerates tissue, that's why Dad gave it to me back when he cured me."

"You should not be playing with this, Peter," his mother said. She looked awful.

"I'm sorry," he said. "Really, Mom."

"I would tell you that you have to stop, but I know you won't," she said. He could see tears in her eyes and he felt like the worst son in the world. She wasn't even his mother, he thought. Then he felt worse.

"I'll be more careful," he said. "I promise."

She held his hand. He said, "Did you talk to Olivia?"

"I did," his mother said, smiling. "She said she would come by after dinner. Significantly earlier than her usual visits."

Peter looked down at his hands. She said, "I won't say anything."

She left when Olivia came. Olivia smiled nervously and then sat down next to him. Olivia said, "What did you do? I had the worst migraine."

"I'm sorry, were you at school? Are you okay now?"

"I'm fine," she said. She rubbed her forehead. "Did it work?"

"Yeah, I saw the other side," he said. "I didn't mean to give you a migraine."

"It's okay," she said. "Peter, I have to tell you something."

"That sounds ominous," he said.

"I applied to a boarding school in Virginia, and I just heard I got in, so I start there in September," she said, not looking at him.

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"What do you care? You're going home," she said.

"What is wrong with you?" The lights in the room were flickering.

"What's wrong with you? You're so excited to go home, why are you even bothering with me?" Olivia stood up. "I'm sorry."

"Did you come up here just to break up with me?" He wanted her gone.

"I didn't plan to break up with you at all, but clearly I am," Olivia said. "I have plans. Things I want to do, Peter. I'm going to college, then I'm going to join the FBI."

"I want you to do all that," Peter said. "I always want you to do all that. When didn't I?"

"You care about going home," she said. She was glaring at him.

"What is so fucking wrong with that?" Peter noticed the lights were steady. Good to know they both had that under control.

"All you talk about is leaving," she said. Her face was blotchy.

"No, I talk about you and my mom and my jobs and buying a car," he said. "Maybe you only listen for the stuff you're so fixated on."

"I'm going home," Olivia said. "To my house."

"You're dumping me," he said.

"I guess so," she said. She rubbed at her eyes and grabbed her backpack.

All he could think was how good could a school in Virginia be?

When he woke up, he was miserable. He was a moronic idiot. He'd said he loved her, he'd meant it every single time and she'd never said it back. Why had she ever done anything with him. His mother came to pick him up. He didn't say anything while they checked out and went straight to his room. He laid on his side. After half an hour his mother came in and sat on his bed. She didn't try to say anything, she just rubbed his back.

He went back to work and he moped. He focused on his jobs, the tasks people put in front of him. Jesse said, "When you're ready to get back on that horse, I know a girl."

After two weeks, Peter told Jesse to introduce him to the girl. "The only thing is, I told her you were 18."

Peter said, "Why would you do that?"

"I told her you were a high school graduate which you are, and she assumed you were her age, which is 17," Jesse said.

"You could have just told her I'm a genius," Peter said.

"A genius who works three days a week under the table at a garage, fixing cars. You're better off being 18, man," Jesse said.

Peter set about making himself a damn fine fake ID for his new 18 year old self. He found the exercise exciting. He didn't care about breaking the law in the least, he knew he wouldn't be caught.

!

The girl Jesse introduced him to was very pretty, African-American, with her black hair in tight curls close to her head. She was funny, too, and easy to hang out with. He didn't have to ask her twenty questions and watch her face carefully to figure out what she was feeling. Her name was Krystelle. Their first two dates were easy in a scary way, how he wasn't the least troubled about lying to her. He imagined telling his mother about her and pictured her face when he said he told Krystelle he was 18.

On their third date they were making out in the back of her car. He moved off her and said, "Wait. I have to tell you something."

Krystelle looked wary. He really liked the way he could just tell how she felt. He said, "I'm not 18. I'm 15. I didn't want to lie to you. I want to stop lying to you."

"You thought we were going to have sex, so you didn't want to keep lying to me?"

"Exactly," he said. "That doesn't make me sound good."

"I've heard worse," she said. "So you're a high school student."

"No, I graduated last year," he said.

"You work at a garage now. Did you flunk out or are you some kind of genius?"

"Uh, the second," he said.

She looked him up and down. "Did you have a breakdown or something, is that why you're not in college?"

Peter shrugged. "You know, basically, yes. I work on all the electronic systems at the garage and I have two other jobs, including one at a computer store, so I'm not completely out of the math and science fields." He smiled at her.

She nodded. "Okay. Okay. You do look more 15 than 18."

"I know," he said.

She hadn't put her shirt back on. She nodded again and then kissed him. "Wait," she said, "are you also a virgin?"

"No, I'm not," he said.

"Okay, good," she said. She kissed him again. They did end up having sex in the back of her car. It was pretty amazing.

Peter made himself a new fake ID that said he was twenty-two so he and Krystelle could have a beer or two.

He coasted. He worked, he hung out with Krystelle, he made a bunch of friends at the computer store who were into weird science and computer games. He had another group of friends he met through the computer store who were interested in the many not quite legal possibilities opening up to them using computers. He found he wasn't disturbed about fleecing idiots or getting a little revenge on people who were assholes. It was like making himself an ID. He needed it, no one cared if he wasn't the age it said he was.

Peter was sitting on the porch in the afternoon one day when a car pulled up. It was a slightly used Honda, with a sticker from Olivia's school in the corner. Then Olivia got out of the car. She had kissed the guy in the car goodbye before getting out. The car drove off and Olivia looked at him. She inhaled and exhaled and she walked with visible determination towards him. He said, "Hey."

She said, "Hi. How are you?"

"Fine. Why did your boyfriend drop you off here?"

She glared at him. "I wanted your help. Cortexiphan things."

"You're leaving for Charlottesville in the fall, aren't you being mean to your boyfriend, acting like you're going to stay around?"

She winced. She said, "Actually, he's a senior. He's going off to college in the fall, so neither of us is pretending anything. Are you just going to be mad at me, or are you going to help me?"

He looked at her. She looked the same. She was beautiful and she didn't realize it, she never wore makeup or much jewelry. He was still in love with her. He said, "Fine, I'll help. If I can. I'm leaving at five, I'm going to a show with my girlfriend and we're getting dinner before that."

"A show?" Olivia nearly smirked.

"A band, with guitars and drums, perform at a club, we listen to music and dance around. It's great, you should try it," he said.

She rolled her eyes. She came inside, though. They sat in his lair. She said, "Sometimes, a few times, when I was angry, I think I started fires."

"Always when you're angry? Not other times?"

She said, "Yeah."

"We got to the point where anger wasn't your trigger for moving things with your mind, or seeing things from the other side."

"So can we do that for this?"

Peter glanced around his lair. A lot of his equipment and journals had a thin line of dust on them. He sighed. He said, "Sure. Let's start with the same things we've done before." He sat down on the floor.

Olivia made a face but she sat down across from him. She offered him her hands. He said, "Wait," and went into the living room. He took one of the candles his mother had around for blackouts. He sat down across from her and set the candle between them. Then he took her hands. He said, "Okay. Try, think of a blank wall. Blank and white. And that's all. Then open your eyes."

She looked at him steadily. He said, "I'm going to try to light the candle. Then you can put it out." It barely worked on his side. She was quick to snuff it out. He got a good flame going his fifth or sixth try. Olivia doused it immediately.

He said, "We probably need to practice more. I'm not saying that because I'm so excited about seeing you."

"I know," she said. "In two days?"

"That sounds good," he said.

The show was pretty good. He surprised himself by not thinking about Olivia at all that night.

Olivia came back like she said she would. They worked on her fire starter thing for an hour, then she said, "Are you any better at moving things with your mind?" He thought he detected some mocking in her voice.

"No," he said. "I haven't done anything since you showed up here. Contrary to your impression of me, sometimes I'm a regular teenager who just fucking mopes after being dumped."

She mumbled, "Sorry." Then she sat down again and said, "We can practice."

He wondered if he wanted to. He sat down across from her before he thought too hard.

They started hanging out twice a week, just focused on the cortexiphan. Together they were amazing. Peter didn't push the other side viewing. They set things on fire and put it out. They rearranged Peter's lair while sitting on the floor.

After a month, Peter said, "What if you try to send me a thought, or an image?" He looked at her. "You didn't want me to read your mind because you were already planning to get away from me."

"I was never planning to get away from you. I am going to a school that gets graduates into the best schools. And yeah. That's why. Nothing to do with my privacy." She took his hands. "Let's try your idea."

He felt like he was getting slapped behind his eyes. He let go of her hands and rubbed his forehead. "Were you trying to hurt me?"

"No," she said, sincerely. "No, I wasn't. I was thinking of Rachel."

"Is Rachel mad at me for not coming around?"

"No," she said. "Of course not. She knows we broke up."

"Fine, let's try again. It worked a little." All it did the first time was give him a headache.

After a half hour, he said, "Would you let me try to do it to you? I'll just send an image or something."

He was much better at it than Olivia. She immediately smiled. "An olive tree."

"No headache?"

"No," she said. "Sorry I suck."

"You can learn from me," he said. She got the next three right. The fourth time he tried just a feeling. She giggled hysterically. "I tried to make you laugh," he said.

She was still smiling. "You made me laugh."

"Okay, your turn." Olivia was still a blunt object in his head but he could see the shape of what she was sending.


	3. Chapter 3

Notes: this chapter has Peter/original male character and references to drinking.

* * *

It was June. Peter woke up and got on his bike without even thinking.

He found her sitting in the backyard, on the same plastic bench where she'd first kissed him. He didn't understand why they kept that fucking thing. The Dunhams probably had different associations with it than he did. Peter said "hey" loudly and she turned around to look at him, startled.

He sat down next to her, taking in her long dress, slight make-up, earrings, and hair up. He said, "So you were bowling tonight."

She looked down with a very faint smile. She said, "Prom. Senior Prom. Why are you here?"

"You called me," he said. "I had a very vivid dream where I could almost hear you and finally I ended up at your house, like now, except inside, and you were sitting next to me saying my name. Plaintively. So I woke up and biked over here."

"Oh," Olivia said. Her eyes widened. "Do you think that's a cortexiphan thing?"

"Probably. But you're okay, so I'll leave," he said and didn't get up. "Senior prom with your boyfriend?"

"Ex-boyfriend," she said with a grimace. "We broke up. I broke up with him."

"Did he do something horrible?" Peter scanned her bare arms and shoulders. He noticed a balled up pair of hose stuck in high heels on the grass by Olivia's bare feet. She'd gotten a pedicure.

"No," she said, forcefully. She sighed. "As soon as he found out I wasn't a virgin, everything became about having sex, it's like all he wanted to do. Tonight he wanted to leave prom early because he has this hotel room. Not with any of his friends for an after party. I dumped him and he drove me home."

Peter looked back at the dark house. "Where is everyone?"

"Rachel is at a sleepover and my aunt went on a Church trip," Olivia said. "Can you believe it?"

"No," he said. "No way she likes whats-his-face more than me."

"No," Olivia said. "She hates whats-his-face. She'll be thrilled we broke up."

"Me, too," Peter said. "My mom said just because someone says yes to something one time doesn't mean they are saying yes for every time after that. Also, don't make everything all about sex."

"Your mom should give every boy his sex talk," Olivia said.

Peter nodded. "So you were miserable and dream-called for me."

She shrugged. "You were a better boyfriend in nearly every single way than whats-his-face."

"He had a car," Peter said. He knew what she meant.

She shook her head. "Yeah, that's it. Don't you have a girlfriend? Why were you home Friday night?"

"Even when I was seeing someone I still was in bed by midnight. Anyway, she dumped me last week. It was actually a relief," he said.

"Because going out with a hot 17 year old is such a burden," Olivia said.

"You didn't love it," Peter said.

"Why did you guys break up? She found out you were 15," Olivia said.

"I told her I was 15 on our third date," he said. The moon was very bright. He felt like an asshole. "She dumped me because she felt like I wasn't over you."

"Oh," Olivia said.

"I thought I was, but I could see her where she thought I wasn't. I did deserve to be dumped," he said. "I'll go now."

"Stay," Olivia said.

He looked at her in the half light from the back porch and the moon. "I hope whats-his-face told you how beautiful you look."

"He sort of did," she said. "But thanks." She stood up, heels in her hand. "Want to come in?"

"Sure," he said.

Once they were inside, she kissed him. She dragged him back to her room. She started unzipping her dress and she said, "This isn't us getting back together."

"Of course," he said. "I'm good." He wasn't casual, he wasn't good. He loved her and he'd take even these scraps.

He took her dress off and hung it up in her closet while she sat on the bed in her bra and underwear. She looked shy and brave.

It was perfect being with her and apparently, whats-his-face hadn't made much of an effort to make sure it was good for her since she was surprised by Peter's efforts. He thought she was really happy with him by the end. He said, "I love you, Olive," when they both were finished. She didn't look mad at him. He was mad at himself.

"Your mom really gives good sex talks," she said. He'd cleaned up everything, hid the condom wrapper and used condom in other trash so her aunt wouldn't find it. He sat down on top of the blankets on her bed. He reached for his clothes. She pulled him back. "I'll set the alarm for early so you can bike home before your mom realizes you'd left."

He really liked sleeping with her. He really hated her awful alarm, the local classic rock station blasting Led Zeppelin at four am. He said, "I'm going."

She turned off the alarm and got out, groggily. She put on some clothes as he got completely dressed.

"I'll call you," she mumbled as she got back in bed.

She called two days later to tell him her aunt had gotten her a camp counselor job at a church affiliated camp somewhere in Shithole, Georgia. She was excited about it because she'd learn all sorts of survival skills along with the campers. "It will look great on my college applications," she said and then braced herself. He could hear her getting ready to defend herself over the phone.

He said, "Have fun. Make sure to write." He knew they weren't getting back together but he'd thought they had the whole summer. He thought he had the whole summer to try. He didn't.

She did write. He got the letter she'd written on her first or second day at the counselor training before the kids showed up.

He wrote back. He wrote about the appliance store closing and a book he'd read about J. Edgar Hoover. She wrote him back and half the letter was in a code she expected him to figure out. It took him five minutes.

He knew from her third letter she had another boyfriend. It made sense to him, Olivia was attractive to everyone. He wrote her back and didn't mention it. She wrote back talking about her camp, dropping that other boy's name casually. They were just pen pals and he could accept that, mostly.

Peter spent most of his summer working, choosing the car he was going to buy the second he turned 16, and hanging out. At least two nights a week he had someone's house to bike to, someone who would give him a ride to a liquor store that would take his ID, many someones who were always pleased to share a beer or two with him. It was an easy, simple, very surface kind of fun, talking to people, drinking, not smoking weed or taking any of the pills that went around.

There were girls. He never did much more than make out which was fine. It was fine. He didn't need to date anyone seriously. He recognized it was an arbitrary line but he decided he wasn't going beyond second or third base unless he was actually dating. If he spent an hour or so in a closet, on his knees, some girl's thighs pressing down on his shoulders, and they didn't go to the movies or try to meet up in the future, it didn't bother him. It didn't bother the girls, either, as far as he could tell and he did everything short of a field sobriety test before even kissing them.

One time, there was a boy. That Saturday night, Peter was at someone's home, someone he didn't know at all and he was already half dreading the bike ride home. He might just call a cab, he thought. A guy he didn't know at all sat down next to him on the low brick wall Peter had claimed as his own. White Guy said, "Exes suck. Right?"

"Absolutely," Peter said. "Mine keeps writing me about her new boyfriend and not admitting he's her new boyfriend. I'm not stupid. I get it."

"And you write back?"

"I want to demonstrate that I'm totally over her, and also, be her friend, and also, I am not over her," Peter said, laughing. He finished his third beer and reached down to take his fourth out of the six pack at his feet. He offered one to his wall mate. The guy took it.

"My ex dumped me to get back together with the one before me," Guy said. He glanced back into the party.

"Getting dumped sucks," Peter said. He let the pleasant buzz slide over his brain. He wondered if he'd be able to use his freaky abilities better drunk. Maybe he wouldn't even need Olivia. A thought for another time.

Guy put his hand on Peter's thigh, a strong grip and then he was kissing Peter. It was odd for a split second and then it was just a pretty good kiss. The guy pulled back and said, "You're Mark, right?"

"No, I'm Peter. Did you mean to kiss Mark?"

"Yes, shit, I'm sorry," Guy said. "My ex Greg dumped me for his ex, Julio, and I thought you were Mark."

"Who is Mark in all that? I assume you aren't Mark," Peter said, smiling.

"No, I'm Ray, Mark is Julio's ex," Ray said.

"Well, I hope kissing me was sticking it to them enough," Peter said. He laughed a little.

"I know, it sounds like a soap opera," Ray said.

"Sounds like teenagers," Peter said. "Which we are."

Ray giggled and reached for another beer. "Are you even gay? I thought maybe the reference to the girl ex was just like, code for don't beat me up, I can't tell you're gay, too."

"That is a weird code," Peter said. "No, I'm not. First time."

"Thanks for not punching me out," Ray said.

"That didn't really occur to me," Peter said. "Good kiss." He touched his beer to Ray's beer like a toast.

Ray giggled again. He kissed Peter again. It was good again. They ended up in Ray's car where it turned out Ray was pretty incredible at hand jobs. Peter suspected he was merely adequate shading into okay. Ray did many things he'd seen on COPS to demonstrate he was sober enough to drive.

He woke up in the morning with a slight hangover. He stared at the ceiling of his room trying to decide how he felt. He felt, mostly, just about the same. He'd been under the impression realizing you were attracted to the same sex was supposed to be a little earth shattering or something. Mostly, it felt like a data point he already knew was on the chart, but he'd just noticed individually.

Apparently, everyone had seen him and he spent a week rolling at his eyes at a series of stupid questions. Jesse literally said to him, "So are you fucking guys now?"

"I'm not fucking anyone," Peter said, not looking up from the system in front of him.

"But you did make out with that guy," Jesse said.

"Yup," Peter said. He briefly considered a remark about the high quality hand job, but he wouldn't have said anything about any of the girls he'd made out with, so it seemed wrong. "Why do you care? You got another friend you want to fix me up with?"

"You're the only guy I know who wants to do that with another guy," Jesse said.

"No way that's true," Peter said. "But it makes sense none of them want you to know."

"Fine. Are you gonna hit on me now?"

"There's no universe where I'm attracted to you," Peter said. "We're good."

"Okay," Jesse said. They were more like awkward for a few weeks, but then Jesse seemed to forget he thought Peter was weird so it went back to normal.

There were girls. There was another guy, and one more after that. Olivia wrote regularly, surprisingly long letters. He always replied immediately. He learned a lot about electronic systems and a number of shady things he could do with computers and the internet he filed away for later in life. He only contemplated trying them on Olivia's new boyfriend for a few minutes. He didn't do it.

Olivia didn't even come home from her camp. She went straight to Virginia. He'd visited Rachel more than once over the summer, took her to a few movies, one of their major bonding points was how much they missed Olivia.

One week before Peter's sixteenth birthday, he sat down with his mother to talk over his impending purchase. Her first words were, "Peter, don't ever get behind the wheel drunk. Ever."

"Got it," he said. "Trust me, I will treasure this car." He smiled at her and she said nothing. He said, "Sorry, I know. I won't, Mom."

"I'm quite aware of the amount of drinking you've done this summer. I know you're not the typical 15 year old and with the amount of independence you've always had, I'm sure you've calculated how little I can actually threaten you with anything, but Peter, I hope my opinion still matters to you." She smiled at him but still looked sad. "I hope you know you can talk to me."

"I know," Peter said. "I don't think about what you can threaten me with. I don't think like that."

"Good," she said. "You've been drinking a lot."

"If you were raising me over in Britain, it wouldn't be a lot."

"That isn't a very good argument," she said.

"It's still not a lot. It's a six pack over the course of a weekend," Peter said. "You shouldn't worry."

"I'm your mother," she said. "Is this your plan for the rest of your life? For the next five years? Working three jobs, parties on the weekend, all these people in your life that you seem to barely care about?"

He rubbed his forehead. "Getting home is too hard. I haven't even been close after all these years. I know I should keep trying, but I just need a break. I have friends."

"How long a break are you thinking?"

He shrugged. "Another few months? A year? I don't know. I'm still working on some stuff." He spent at least ten minutes every morning practicing. Some of his abilities he'd managed to refine a lot. He thought telekinesis and pyrokinesis were absolutely ridiculous words, but they were both something he could do.

"Okay," she said. "Tell me about your friends."

He shrugged again. She touched his hand and said, "I know you're still sexually active."

"I'm not having sex," he said.

"Oh," she said. "You are not doing this one thing, but everything else you are doing with people you never talk about or want to."

"I still make sure they really really want to and stop when they say stop or when they don't seem into it, I promise," Peter said. "They're all very nice. I know all of their names. Why are you saying people?"

"Is that something you want to talk about?"

"No," he said.

"So there have been some boys among all these perfectly nice people, all of whose names you know. Are you embarrassed about that?" She looked concerned.

Peter found it very irritating. He loved her, he really did, but sometimes she was unbearable. He said, "Not at all."

"No one's bullying you about it?"

"They really can't," Peter said. "I'm not trapped in school with any of them, I have my own group of friends and if some of them are assholes, I'll just find someone else to hang out with."

"Good," she said. "I hope you find someone you want to talk to me about, Peter. I don't care who they are."

"Even if they're twenty years older than me?"

"I really want you to talk about that, please," she said, frowning.

"I know what you mean," he said. "Can we talk about the car now?"

"You know you will find someone like Olivia again," she said. "You are such a special person, Peter, I wish you'd open yourself up so more people could see that."

He looked down and didn't answer her. She pulled the papers about the car closer to her. "Okay, let's talk about your car, then."

!

The first thing he did with his car was drive to Charlottesville and see Olivia. He tried to play it cool, like, hey, I'm just driving around but she looked at him and said, "You drove up to see me."

"Yeah," he said. "I haven't seen you since prom, I just wanted, I missed you."

Olivia actually smiled. "I missed you, too."

"Want to go to dinner? I can take you out," he said. "I have a motel room, so I won't impose on you."

"Like I'd let you stay in my dorm room," Olivia said, her face blank. He'd actually missed trying to read Olivia.

"I didn't think you would, but I didn't want you to think I would think you would," Peter said.

"Did you just make up a tongue twister?" She was almost smiling now.

"A tongue twister would have should, could, good, other words that sound like but aren't would," Peter said. "I can work on one."

"You can tell me at dinner," she said. "Meet me down here at five, okay?"

He nodded. He was admittedly pretty giddy. He got a motel room with one of his fake IDs and paid in cash. He watched TV while he waited forever for five p.m. to come. He was quickly bored and took out a computer he was building on his own. If he finished in time he could give it to Olivia.

Olivia was waiting for him, out of uniform but just in jeans and a black sweater. She smiled nervously. He said, "You know Charlottesville better than me, you pick."

"I really don't," Olivia said. "Let's drive."

She stared out the window but he thought she looked happy. He said, "Do you have a roommate?"

"Yeah," Olivia said, with a little smile. "Her name's Belinda. She is nothing like me. But we get along so that's good."

"She's not a carbon-based life form?"

That got another little smile. "She's been in boarding schools her entire life. Her parents are really rich. She gets good grades, though."

"It's been three weeks," Peter said. "Are you being graded that frequently?"

"It's a good school," Olivia said. "Let's go there," and she pointed.

The Nook was apparently a favorite of the locals. No one stared at them like they had a third nose, but the clientele didn't look like they were college students or professors. They ordered their food. Peter said, "I've got it covered."

"Because you're rich," Olivia said.

"Not like your roommate. Actually, my income just took a hit two weeks ago."

"You lost money by turning 16," Olivia said.

"Since I can work legally, I am now working legally. So the computer shop and the garage are both taking money out for taxes and social security," Peter said. "Luckily they didn't try to suddenly pay me minimum wage."

"Can anyone at the garage handle the electronic systems besides you?"

Peter shrugged. "I have to take some class to be certified to do the job I've been doing for the last year."

"How's Jesse and all of them?"

Peter shrugged again. "We're a little distant. Mostly because they all think I'm gay."

"Why do they think that?"

"Because I made out with a few guys," Peter said. He thought this line of conversation was really unlikely to get Olivia back with him, but he had never gotten out of the habit of telling her the whole truth.

"Huh," Olivia said. Her mac and cheese had arrived. She said, "But you still make out with girls, right?"

"Yes," Peter said. "But I think half of the guys at the garage think I'm hot for them."

"No one's attracted to those guys," Olivia said. "I think that makes you more bisexual than gay."

"I guess," Peter said. "I'm not signing up for any parades."

"So I guess you're getting laid a lot," Olivia said, looking at her dinner.

"No," Peter said. "You know me. I haven't had sex since you, I've just been making out."

"A very important distinction," Olivia said. "I had a boyfriend at camp, I don't now. I did have sex with him."

"I knew about camp boy," Peter said.

"Of course, you can read my mind," Olivia said.

"I've never been able to read your mind," Peter said. "But I can read between the lines of your letters."

"I couldn't, I never got the impression from your letters you'd started experimenting," Olivia said.

"It's not," Peter said. "It's not an experiment or a phase. I'm not going to get over finding people attractive. It's just being attracted to some people. But you're the only one for me." He blushed as it tumbled out of his mouth.

"The only one," Olivia said. She grimaced. "Well, you're 16, I'm sure we'll both fall in love again."

Peter felt a little sick and pushed his fries around. "I was never sure you loved me," he said.

"I do," Olivia said. He couldn't breathe right. She pressed her lips together. She said, "Maybe you could show me your motel room."

"Yeah, I made you a computer, actually, I can show you how it works," Peter said, happy again.

"We could do that, too," Olivia said.

He tried not to be a teenaged boy and rush her through dinner. He was a little tempted.

As soon as he opened the door, she was kissing him, standing on her tip toes. "You're so tall," Olivia said.

He said, "Is the guy thing a, turn off or turn on?"

"I'm still thinking about it," Olivia said. "Ask me after."

He realized, on top of her, inside her, he hadn't missed sex really, he'd missed sex with Olivia. Everything felt like more.

Olivia got under the covers, wearing just a t-shirt and pajama pants without undies.

He said, "Did you pack to stay the night?"

"Maybe," Olivia said. "Did you really make me a computer?"

He started to get out of bed to show her, but she held onto his arm. "You can show me in the morning," Olivia said. She genuinely liked having him around, he thought.

"Aren't you, do they have bed checks at your fancy school?"

"Yeah, and in three weeks Belinda's missed five of them. She owes me. She told me to pack the bag," Olivia said.

"I like that Belinda," Peter said.

"I've decided the guy thing is a neutral. You're attracted to a lot of people I don't think are attractive. As long as you want me, that's what I care about," Olivia said.

"I will always want you," Peter said.

She sighed. "Even after you get home?"

Peter didn't have an answer for that. He said, "With that computer you can email me all the time. I could come up every few weeks, whenever works for you."

"I would like that," Olivia said.

He fell asleep looking at her face.

In the morning, as she got ready, he said, "I can show you how this computer works. It's better than anything you can buy."

"Maybe tonight?" Olivia smiled at him. "Are you staying for a day or two?"

"Two," Peter said, deciding. "Today and tomorrow. Do you want to get dinner again? We can go to the Nook again or we can order pizza. Or whatever. You need to study, too."

"I know," Olivia said. "Let's decide dinner when you pick me up. I'll finish up studying by six."

He drove her to her school. She looked out the window again. She said, "I went to the other side this summer, not intentionally. It didn't feel like the kind of thing you write in a letter."

"What happened?"

"We were hiking in the woods, I got turned around. I was lost and scared and I panicked. Then I was somewhere else. Like, the sun hadn't set yet, there were fewer trees. I could see to the road a lot easier. I walked down to the road for ten minutes and then I thought, what if I were stuck there, what was going to happen when they realized I wasn't from their side. That scared me enough to get me back to our side. I was right by the camp. Everyone thought they'd lost me," Olivia said. She was fidgeting with her seat belt.

"But you're okay? I know you're okay, you're sitting right there. But you're okay?"

"I'm fine," Olivia said. "I was totally wiped out that night, but the next morning, I was fine," Olivia said.

"That sounds really scary," Peter said. "I'm scared for you."

"Don't be," Olivia said. "I know you still practice and I practice, too, but I guess sometimes we can make leaps."

"I haven't," Peter said. "Telekinesis and pyrokinesis, that's all I got. I've tried other things, but nothing else works."

"You could send me emotions and thoughts," Olivia said.

"Just you," Peter said. "I tried on my mom and it did nothing."

"I can see the other side sometimes. I see where I am. It's not a boarding school on the other side. Sometimes I try to bring over things I see. Which only works about one percent of the time."

"I appreciate your scientific inquiry, but it's okay if you cool it," Peter said. "I'm not in a rush or anything."

"Yeah," Olivia said. "But I can see that side, and it looks like it's, it needs help. Like you said how Walter broke it. Maybe getting you home will make it better."

"Now I feel guilty," Peter said.

"I'm the one yelling at you for trying to get home and then telling you they need you," she said with a sigh.

The night they ordered pizza to his motel room and he showed her how her computer worked. "If you can hook it up to a fast phone line, you can do a lot on this. It's made for the internet and has a ton of storage," Peter said.

Olivia grinned. "I should reward you with sex."

"I wouldn't say no," Peter said.

He drove home happy, giddy even. Olivia emailed every day basically, sometimes three lines, sometimes pages. He always replied right away. He couldn't tell if his mother was happy for him or concerned.

Thinking about what Olivia had said, Peter started looking into the kind of breakage Walter had done. There was the theoretical suppositions, but finding real data was predictably absent. Peter was sure that if he simply went back it wouldn't make a difference. The problem was the rip between the worlds. Maybe if he got back he could help them figure it out.

He tapped his fingers on his own computer. When he got back home he could help his people figure out how to heal his own universe.

The third time he went up to visit Olivia, he stayed in her dorm room. He woke up in the morning and Olivia had already left for class. He got out of bed and heard a low whistle behind him. He turned around and grabbed for his underwear.

"I'm Belinda," the white girl on the other bed with perfect blonde hair said. "I don't have that same insanely early rifle class Livvy does."

"I'm Peter," he said, trying to find his pants.

"Don't rush, I've already seen you naked from both sides," Belinda said. "I bet you're growing taller every day."

"Not exactly every day," Peter said. He was 5'10" though now, as of his last doctor visit a week earlier.

"You've got that beanpole baby fat thing boys get when they just shoot up," Belinda said. "You're still cute, don't stress. Is your mom or dad from another country?"

"My mother's British," Peter said.

"That explains the dick," Belinda said. "I mean the presence of the -"

"Yeah, I get it," Peter said. "Olivia really likes you."

"I think she does," Belinda said. She sat up from her bed and thank goodness was dressed in her uniform. "She's hard to read."

"She's never fake, though," Peter said.

"You would say that, you're in love with her," Belinda said. "She really likes you, too."

"I love her," Peter said.

Belinda was out that night so he and Olivia sat on the floor and tried to see the other side together. With Olivia holding his hand, he saw what was on his side in this place. It was a computer company or factory. He was confused, but he could tell the technology was ahead of theirs. Olivia said, "Look out the window."

He watched a blimp go by. "Cool," he said.

She said, "If I just tried hard enough, I think I could just drop you off."

"No," he said. "Don't. I'm not ready."

Olivia let go of his hand and said, "Good. You just let me know when you are."

"Olive," he said, and kissed her.

She closed her eyes and leaned into him.

The next day Belinda was there and Olivia wasn't when Peter woke up. He got dressed and scanned Olivia's room. "It's funny," Peter said. "She has a picture of my mother here." He pointed to one from last year or so, his mother and Rachel hugging at the Dunham house.

"None of you," Belinda said.

"I don't think we've ever taken pictures of each other. I don't have one of her," Peter said.

"I have a camera," Belinda said, taking it out from one of her bags. "You look good, don't touch your hair."

"I just woke up," Peter said. "My hair is awful."

"Bedhead is sexy," Belinda said, already taking pictures.

Olivia came in and Peter could already tell she was upset. He held up his hand to Belinda to stop. Olivia threw a card at him. "He sent this, Peter."

"Who?" Belinda said.

Peter opened the card. It was from her stepfather. "How the fuck did he find you? Your birthday isn't until tomorrow."

"Yeah, he's one day early, that's what I want to dwell on," Olivia said. She was pacing. Belinda had wisely shut up. "How does he know where I am?"

"I don't know," Peter said. He stood up and went to the computer. "Let me see what I can find."

"No, just, no, Peter, stop." She had stopped pacing and was just standing in the middle of the room.

"Gotta pee," Belinda said, as she left the room.

Peter turned again and hugged Olivia. "Olive," he said. "We'll make this stop."

"I can set him on fire," she mumbled.

"No, you won't. You're going to college and you're going to join the FBI and you're not going to be studied as a firestarter," Peter said. Olivia was somewhere between scared and furious.

"I could do it," Olivia said.

"Let me," Peter said. "I'll make sure he never writes you again, never finds you."

Olivia buried her face in his chest. She nodded. Then she said, "Okay."

"In fact," Peter said, stepping away from her so she could regain her composure before Belinda returned her. "Here's your birthday present."

She tore it open and looked at the picture. "Where did you find this?" She was almost back to smiling, a little.

"Internet," he said. "You'd be amazed." It had taken some work to find a good picture of Olivia's father in his uniform with Olivia, but once he'd tracked down some of Mr. Dunham's platoon mates, it had only taken a few more calls after that.

She hugged him. "It's perfect, thank you."

He left that evening and drove in an ambling fashion, stopping in Atlanta. He broke into Emory University and a fairly sophisticated computer lab. He logged on as a student from an ID he'd stolen. Then he contacted some of his friends. He wrote to them that he needed to find a man. Peter wrote: he beat his wife, his stepdaughters. _I think he deserves a little mayhem._

The friends he picked were excited immediately. Fucking up someone's life and feeling righteous about it was just what they needed. Olivia's stepfather was located in twenty minutes. His credit rating was destroyed ten minutes later. Peter had identified the prescriptions and medical equipment the asshole relied on.

His hands hovered over the keys. Cutting them off, plus the credit rating, plus some other things he could see people working on, Peter would be letting the man die. He posted to the chat room, making sure everyone had checked on the guy's liabilities and who would get stuck with them. The answer was complicated, but it wouldn't be Olivia or Rachel. Plus the dickhead had an insurance policy that paid off Mrs. Dunham and therefore her heirs should he die.

Peter remembered Olivia's black eye at age 7. She'd had worse. Peter stopped dithering. He cut off the medical supplies. He told the rest of the chat room he'd delayed them. It was a lie. That was the line between mayhem and killing.

Peter found a motel in Atlanta and slept like a baby.


	4. Chapter 4

Notes: this chapter contains swearing, non-explicit m/f sex and m/m sex.

* * *

Olivia called him a week later. Her emails had been reserved. She almost never called him. She said, "I'm sorry about this."

"You're dumping me again," Peter said.

"I'm breaking up with you," Olivia said. "I love you, but I can't do this. I can't do long distance, I can't. I shouldn't have gotten back together with you, I'll always be waiting for you to leave."

"Are you crying?" Her voice sounded like she was crying.

"Yes, does that make you feel better?"

"Yes," he said.

She said, "I don't think you should contact me, okay? We need a clean break."

"You need a clean break," Peter said. "I'm sorry. I don't deal with this well."

"I, it's okay. I'm sorry," Olivia said. "I loved you, I've loved you since I was 13, I think I should tell you that. It's me, not you. I'm not good at this."

"That's really helpful," Peter said. "I feel much better."

He hung up.

!

He stuck with his two jobs. The people he knew who liked mayhem, his friends, either stopped talking to him when they heard Olivia's stepfather had died or they talked to him all the time. He wasn't planning on more killings so he stayed cool and distant. Cool and distant was a pretty good way to be when it wasn't even your own universe.

He still went to see Rachel on the weekends, just to check on her. He never asked about Olivia and he always paid attention to Rachel's very important updates on her school, what she was allowed to do, what she planned to do.

Rachel and Olivia both called his mother Aunt B. He overheard his mother once on the phone with Olivia, talking about school. He went out his bedroom window and drove away. He used his fake ID to buy a six pack of beer. He sat in the field where he and Olivia had done their cortexiphan experiments. He drank and thought he needed to go home. People there still wanted him. Even if he didn't remember them clearly these days. They were out there.

He could do it without Olivia.

He'd gotten Olivia to the point where she could cross over and even take things from the other side. He should be able to do it to himself. What he lacked in specialness he made up in IQ. He was from there. It should be, it should feel like falling into your own bed.

After two beers, he didn't much care either way. He had work the next day. He could be doing anything else.

He packed up his working room, leaving out only the computers and some of the chemistry equipment. He started adding more computers, bigger monitors for the computers, other things he jerry rigged. What he wanted was the fastest connection speed he could get and access to everywhere.

He took the courses to be certified and kept working at the garage. He fixed cars he wasn't supposed to be able to. He amused himself in the evening cataloguing the easiest ways to break into the cars. Sometimes he would post them on interested forums, merely asking that those who used them stay away from Florida.

The computer store was a hangout for a lot of people. The owner enjoyed making a profit and spent most of his time on usenet groups talking about Star Trek while Peter and the two other employees ran the store.

Laura was the newest hire. The owner just said hire someone new, do the interviews. Peter made sure Laura knew her way around the things they sold and things they could order. She was African-American, with short hair bleached orange. She had five earrings in one ear. She would intimidate the shit out of half of their clientele which Peter immediately liked. When she proved smart as a whip and obsessed with video games and what they could evolve into, he hired her right away.

Laura was taking a year off to make money for college. She mostly politely ignored Peter. She came to him at the end of her first month and said, "You know half of these customers are fucking assholes."

"Yup," Peter said. He looked at her weary eyes. "Do you need me to help you out when they're being dicks to you? A lot of those customers are the kind of assholes who only listen to people like me."

"Yes, I would appreciate that," Laura said.

He was a little turned on by the thinly disguised contempt in her voice. Olivia had completely screwed him up.

Peter spent two weeks saying, "I just said the same thing she said, dickhead," and "Talk to her like that one more time and you're banned for life. Not even kidding." His vaguely shady reputation really helped with that last one.

One night they were both closing and shooing out the last loser who had a smaller screen at home for his video games so liked playing at the store as long as he could. "The weather looks really bad," Peter said. "You biked in, right? If you throw it in the back of my car, I can drive you home."

Laura said, "Maybe if I just wait out the worst of it."

Peter said, "Then it'll be three a.m. according to the weather service." He smiled his occasionally charming smile. "I won't do anything, I promise. I just want you to be safe." She was already more important to him than most of the people he met, he actually gave a damn about her.

"You know, one of those hacker groups said you killed someone," Laura said.

Peter shrugged. "Do you beat 7 year olds? If not, you're safe from me. If that story was even true."

"I don't believe it," Laura said. "I've had some shit bosses, you know."

"I'm not your boss," Peter said. "Look, I was basically raised by a single mother and you can ask both my ex-girlfriends, I am basically decent to people I like. I like you, I hope that makes you worry less."

Laura looked outside and then gave in. When they got in his car, she said, "How do you afford this?"

"I work at a garage three days a week, I was able to get it for a steal. Not an actual steal. The guy who owned it didn't want to pay for the repairs so I bought it for a song, and did the repairs myself. And a few upgrades," Peter said. "I used to drive back and forth from Virginia every week and never once had a breakdown or even a pause."

"One of the ex-girlfriends is in Virginia?"

"Yup," Peter said. They drove against the wind and driving rain for another ten minutes.

"Visibility is shit," Peter said. "Do you see your turnoff?"

"Yeah," Laura said. "Right, uh, there." She pointed.

He had to use his cortexiphan abilities a little to keep the car on the road as he turned but he managed to pull into the driveway. There were no lights on. Peter said, "Did the electricity get knocked out?"

"Or I live alone and I'm not home yet," Laura said. She looked over at him. "Come on in. You can sleep here and go home later."

"You don't have to," Peter said.

Laura shook her head. "No, I don't, but I'm being gullible tonight."

"Or generous," Peter said.

"We'll see."

The electricity was indeed out, and Peter lit a few candles pretending to use a lighter he had in his pocket to show off to himself. He took off his boots and laid down on the lumpy couch.

Laura came out of her room a half hour later and said, "No one can sleep on that couch. You're so trustworthy, I trust you to sleep on top of the covers on the bed."

"Thank you, thank you very much," he said, unwinding himself from the torture couch. He fell asleep immediately.

He woke up again when the electricity came on, the radio suddenly singing. Laura got out of bed and turned off the lights and the radio. She climbed back in bed. She said, "Doesn't someone need to know where you are?"

"I paged my mother while I was on the couch," Peter said.

She said, "I heard you were gay but you stare at my breasts sometimes."

"I'm not gay," Peter said. "I've made out with some guys. I might do it again. But I do have two ex-girlfriends, too. Sorry about the breasts."

"From you, I don't mind," she said.

"Do you like me?" He smiled, even though she couldn't see it.

"You're confusing. You've graduated high school, but you're sixteen," she said.

"I graduated when I was fourteen," Peter said.

"Why didn't you go to college?"

"Didn't feel like it," Peter said.

"Why do your parents let you do whatever you want?"

"My dad is in jail. Basically. He was declared unfit for trial and locked up in the nuthouse. It was manslaughter, he blew up his lab and killed his assistant," Peter said. "My mom is strict about certain things but not the things you think."

"Your life is fucked up," Laura said. "Wanna make out?"

"Yes," Peter said.

She was a great kisser. She reached down and rubbed him through his jeans. He cupped her breast and kissed her neck. She said, "We're not going to have sex tonight."

Peter said, "I think that's good." He made her come, though, and she gave a great handjob.

They were dating after that. He spent a lot of time with her because she was always interesting. He tried not to compare, but while she was mercurial and she considered things deeply, she wasn't a closed book like Olivia. He always knew where he stood.

He even brought her home to meet his mother, unintentionally. He was showing her his computers when his mother got back from work. He'd forgotten her schedule. His mother came into the room and said, "Hello, dear. This must be Laura."

"Hey," Laura said, looking down, suddenly shy.

"I'm going to make tea if you're interested," his mother said.

"I am," Peter said.

"Sure," Laura said. After his mother left, Laura said, "She's intimidating."

"Really?" Peter shrugged. "She's, she's a good person." She wasn't his mother really except she'd raised him with all the pain that had to come along with seeing a boy who looked just like her dead lost son. He tried not to think about it.

"You look sad," Laura said.

"I feel bad for my mom," Peter said. "She and my dad, they had a son who died. My dad went nuts from drugs and grief and got locked up and she was left with me. She's always supported me, even when I wanted to go away."

"Dead kid is the worst," Laura said. "Not to be crude."

"It is the worst," Peter said. "I don't remember it, before you ask."

"We should go have tea with your sad mother," Laura said.

"She's not sad like, all the time. She's probably dancing in the kitchen right now, she's very excited when I connect to people enough to bring them home," Peter said.

"That's something your mother worries about you," Laura said.

"Yeah, I'm a weirdo," Peter said. "Tea time."

They'd been dating for two months when Laura broached possibly having sex. "You know what else makes you a weirdo? You're so laidback about sex."

"I'm not laidback," Peter said. "I think about having sex with you all the time. But you've met my mom. From age 14 to last night, I've heard this lecture about it's harder for girls and women and sometimes they feel they can't say no and a lot about consent."

"Do you think she's obsessed for personal reasons?"

"No," Peter said. "Not like that. I think she doesn't want me to be like my dad. He experimented on people, on children. He never cared about people's choices. I'm not doing experiments on people but she probably worries I have the same blindspot."

"Your dad sounds unpleasant," Laura said.

"He could be charming," Peter said. "But yeah, he's not a good guy. Back to sex."

"I want to feel like it's right between us," Laura said. "We feel good, but not tomorrow, you know?"

"Yeah, yeah," Peter said. "I can wait. What we do is fine."

Peter quit the garage and added a few hours at the computer store. He and Laura would drive around in the evenings, towards the ocean. He would play his music and then she would roll her eyes and put her in her own. "Prince," she said. "Sam Cooke. James Brown. All your music is copied from mine."

"Bold claim," he said. But he liked her smile when she sang along to the music she loved. She was not a great singer at all.

He asked her why she was even in Jacksonville. "My great uncle rents me that place, it's so cheap."

"But you're going to Florida Institute of Technology," he said. "Why not live in Melbourne?"

"My great uncle rents me that place, it's cheap," she said. "I spend a year living on my own, saving money and proving my parents don't cover me and I can get financial aid that isn't tons of loans. Two of my cousins were so screwed by bad loans back in Atlanta, they lost their houses."

"Your whole family is back in Atlanta," Peter said. Did he have that on the other side, some town everyone related to him clustered in, all living on five streets right near each other?

"You sound so envious," Laura said. "It's a little suffocating. My dad and his second wife live literally next door to his parents who lives three doors down from my aunt and her husband and kids. My mom lives with her parents who are two streets over. I walk out the door, I trip over a cousin who thinks I can break into the Pentagon or some shit."

"Why would you even want to break into the Pentagon? Break into Bank of America, say bye bye to your credit card debt or your loan or something," Peter said.

"I'll pass that on," Laura said.

When she was ready to have sex, after three months of dating, she was very ready. She was adventurous in ways he hadn't anticipated at all. She said, "You're watching the wrong porn, P."

"I don't watch much porn at all, honestly," Peter said.

"That's probably a good thing," she said, laughing.

He loved nothing more than his mouth on her full breasts or between her legs. She was only the second girl he'd met who waxed. Once she convinced him to get in her bathtub and she shaved him. It felt odd.

She harped on him to think about college. "You're going to be 17 in September," she said. "If I had your brains, God, I wouldn't be helping people find the right modem to get to AOL faster."

"You're pretty fucking smart," he said.

He thought about going home maybe once a week or that. But he had a girlfriend for now. He could keep waiting.

His most viable plan to date was to try a second dose of cortexiphan and hope he could use the pathways working with Olivia had created to gain some of her powers. He figured it would wait. Most things could.

He drove Laura to her new digs at FIT. She spent the most of the drive talking about how he was wasting his life. "Which, whatever, you were a great year-off boyfriend. No pressure. No worries you wouldn't be there. Enjoyable in bed. Don't you ever want to be more than this, Peter?"

He shrugged. It was too late to explain how hard everything was. Peter stayed silent. Laura said, "You just need to realize what you wanted when you were 14 or 15 isn't what you want anymore."

"Thanks for saving this when we were on a long car drive," Peter said.

"You said I was smart," Laura said.

She let him come into her new dorm room and they had sex one last time on her bed before she put on her new sheets. She kissed him and said she'd email.

She did email, once a week. She wrote about her classes, assholes she met gaming. He told her about computer stuff, things that happened in the store, the recent fucked up surge of Star Trek fans to the store.

Rachel and her aunt had moved to Charlottesville. His mother still talked to all three of them. Peter waited for something to happen.

Two days before Olivia's birthday, a white, blond guy with blue eyes who looked like a really hot Ken doll come to life only with a missing back tooth and a clearly home-done tattoo on his wrist came to the store and leaned against the counter. He said, "Are you the gay computer genius who works here?"

Peter sighed. "I'm not gay." He rolled his eyes. "I'm bisexual, okay?"

"Oh, good," guy said. "I'm Darren, actually gay. I dropped out of my school because they were all assholes who hate gays like me and I've been kind of homeschooling with my mom. I want to do a computer science class, but without other people." Darren was about 5'10" and he looked up a little at Peter who had just hit 6'. Darren said, "I thought gay genius, excuse me, bisexual genius, probably wouldn't beat me up."

Peter nodded. "Your parents paying?"

"My mom is. Dad is dead," Darren said, still working his charm.

"My dad is an institution for the criminal mentally ill," Peter said.

"Bisexual genius with shady past, I'm excited already. So I take it that's a yes?"

Darren pushed a packet across the counter, information about making the class translate into high school credit for the program Darren was part of. "You're pretty confident," Peter said.

"I know a guy you hooked up with once," Darren said. "I also hooked up with him."

"So do I get paid?"

"$2000 for the 16 week class," Darren said. "We can do half it here at the store so you'd be double dipping."

Peter shook his head but he smiled. "Okay, give me a week to plan. Then I want my money."

"And my phone number," Darren said, writing it on Peter's palm with a sharpie.

Darren respectfully waited three lessons before hitting on Peter and by that time, Peter was happy to respond. Making out with Darren was making out in general, just different parts of Peter suddenly turned on. He got hard either way, but if he were analyzing his personal physical response to women vs men, Darren was a very illuminating data point. There was something about Darren on top of him, their dicks rubbing together through their jeans, and then after one or two times, their naked dicks rubbing together.

Darren took safe sex seriously, like a religion. There were gloves and dental dams and specific lube and so many condoms. Darren didn't care about the full STD panel Peter's mother had insisted on at his last check up, it wasn't enough.

It wasn't per se bad. Peter preferred the bareback blowjob, but whatever, he made Darren come and Darren made him see the kind of visions Walter described in his journals from the 60s.

"I've never had sex sex," Peter said. "With a guy."

"That's not true," Darren said.

They were naked on Peter's bed, slightly cleaned up, sticky from the lube different places. Darren said, "You've had a blowjob. At least five just from me. That's oral sex. You've had handjobs, that's digital sex, again, more than five from me. Since digital here means not computer stuff, but fingers in use, you've had fingers in your ass and your fingers in other men's asses. You're limiting the sexperience to a dick in your ass or your dick is some guy's ass," Darren said.

"The sexperience," Peter said, grinning. "So you are going to give me that sexperience?"

"We'll see," Darren said. "You're hot, you're smart, you make me laugh, but I don't need a slacker boyfriend."

"My ex-girlfriend said that," Peter said.

"Two people who like you telling you you have a specific fault is definitely not a sign," Darren said.

They had sex anyway, Peter's idea of it, with Peter on the bottom two months into studying and dating. He liked it better. He liked it even better the more they did it.

He didn't mind being the one fucking Darren, but he preferred it the other way around. Darren always somehow had this rhythm in his hips that left Peter grasping for air and wanting to die, to drown in the pleasure.

They went to parties and hung out with Darren's band of queer fellows well met, as he described it. It wasn't exactly Peter's scene but he liked all of them. "Can't do anything, you say?" Peter stared at a collection of sticks in the backyard and lit a steady fire.

Darren came out, draped an arm around him. "I did that," Peter said. "I have skills."

"No one says otherwise," Darren says.

"You know I'm all of 17," Peter said.

"You're not 17, not the way it's counted now. You've graduated high school, you've been working since you were 13, you and your mom are more partners and best friends. You act like you're 17 because you're a slacker."

"I like it," Peter said. "My mom is my mom, by the way."

But he was tired of it. He sat down with Walter and William's records taken out of their hiding place. He made a batch of cortexiphan with a slight concentration on perception which translated to more LSD.

He didn't need Olivia, he wouldn't need Olivia. He injected the whole vial.

He woke at someone shaking him. "What the fuck, what the FUCK," Darren was saying. "Did you make your own smack? This is you not slacking? Are you even alive in there?"

"You're glimmering," Peter said, running his hand down Darren's face. "Everything is. So that worked."

He sat up and sat back down, throwing up over the side of his bed.

"We're done," Darren said. "You fuck up your life without me."

"This is actually me trying to get things back on track," Peter said. But the room was empty. He went back to sleep. What a surprise his drama queen boyfriend threw a tantrum at a mild overdose. Peter could make smack, if he wanted. Probably damn good smack.

His mother would miss Darren. She loved him, his brashness and straightforwardness. Peter decided he would miss Darren the person, not just Darren someone he had sex with. Peter fell asleep feeling sadness creep into his brain. Everybody dumped him.

When he woke up enough to sit up he had to concentrate to make everything glimmer. He felt sober enough to drive. He drove to the beach.

He parked in an empty parking lot. It was three a.m.. The college radio station had been playing a song he barely knew but he got the chorus. He left his shoes on top of his car. He walked down the beach towards the waves, mumbling "fuck you and your untouchable face." He walked into the ocean, the waves battering his knees.

Home was passing through him. He only had his mother anymore. "Your untouchable face," he said.

If he crossed over here and the water level was different, he could die, he could rise and get the bends. He sang that song as he walked deeper in. He sang as well as Laura. He breathed in deeply and felt his home pass through him.

He was ten feet underwater. He burst up to the surface, treading water for a moment, gasping for air. The ocean had risen at least 11, 12 feet on this side. Was that his fault?

Was it Walter's fault?

Peter swam to the shore. He looked around at the empty beach and stripped naked. He could let his clothes dry a little before going back and going home. He read the signs posted along the edge of the beach. He'd been swimming in bad water. The rain here was dangerous, at least in this part of Florida.

There were no cars in the parking lot which was a good 50 feet back from the one on his side.

If he could find a phone. If he had a phone number. If anyone around here knew Walter Bishop.

So he could do this without Olivia. He closed his eyes and he was back in his own parking lot. He looked around again to see who was getting the free show. He found swim trunks and a t-shirt in the trunk of his car. Neither were his but he was close enough to Darren's size to wear them comfortably.

He drove home numb and processing. As much as he could think as the cortexiphan worked through his veins.

His backyard was a dead field on the other side. He blinked in and out every morning so he didn't lose the knack. Then he got dressed and went to work.

Two days after Darren broke up with him, Peter's boss insisted Peter take a drug test. Peter knew very well nothing in the cortexiphan would show up. He blithely pissed in the cup. "I'm not on smack or anything, sir," Peter said.

"I just heard stuff. You practically run this store," his boss said.

Peter did run the store. He set the schedules, kept the books, paid the bills. The only thing he didn't do was order wholesale since his boss was a kind of genius at anticipating what people would want.

Three weeks he didn't think about anything, just blinked in and out in the morning, went to work and thought of nothing more than one foot in front of the other.

His parents surely remembered him. His mother here was still mourning her dead son. It had to be worse for him to be gone, growing up without them there. Peter assumed. The other side was more advanced in a lot of ways but seemed to be undergoing a number of ecological disasters. Probably Walter's fault for making the door. Probably a little Peter's fault for not working harder to get home sooner. What had he gained from taking so long to figure out two doses of cortexiphan and having Olivia guide him once or twice was how to get home?

He biked around Jacksonville when he was bored. People recognized him every time, from the garage, or a party, or way back at the appliance store or hardware store. His fellow hacker wannabes. Peter smiled and waved, sometimes he even stopped and talked. None of it mattered, there was very little need to be rude.

His mother had started way back when volunteering at the library. She applied for a job when one opened up and got it. She'd been taking classes to get a MLS. When she did get it, he took her out to dinner and made her wear her ridiculous cap.

She checked on him every single day. He told her why Darren had dumped him but not that he could go home whenever he wanted now. She'd be anxious. He hated making her anxious.

He had stopped going out and drinking, but sometimes he biked at night to clear his head. He came home and saw a limo parked in the driveway and a chauffeur still in the car. He went inside braced for the worst and saw him.

"Well," Peter said to William Bell. "It's not really good to see you again." Peter stood in front of the kitchen counter, positioning himself between his mother, who looked like she was hiding terror, and William Bell.

"Peter," his mother said. She sounded like she was trying to caution him.

"It's very nice to see you again, Peter," Bell said. "I came for two things. The first is the records from the cortexiphan trials down here and the second is to talk to you about your continued attempts to go to the other side."

"I burnt all of it," Peter said. It was the easiest thing in the world to lie to Bell. "I got what I wanted from it and burnt it. Walter took 90% of those notes and did those experiments, so it's my job as his son to keep his work from being replicated. Not repeating the evil he did."

"I don't know it was evil," William said.

"Experimenting on children is probably the third or fourth entry on the list of unreservedly evil things you can do," Peter said. "Like abetting kidnapping. Or finding your own way to the other side, copying their technology, and helping them come at us while you knew where I was the whole time."

Bell's eyes narrowed. Peter had been guessing at half of that, so it was nice to see he was right about all of it. Bell said, "You don't understand the complexities. You're still a child."

"I'm done attempting to go to the other side, I can do it. I've done it every day for the last 3 weeks," Peter said. Bell definitely blanched at that. "So if you came here to threaten me, my mother, any of the cortexiphan subjects -"

"You mean Olivia Dunham?" Bell smiled in a sickly way. Peter really hated that guy.

"I mean all of them. You knew, you knew from the first that Walter stole me. You started going over on your own years ago, you think I don't recognize technology from when I grew up? So you've insinuated yourself with the other side somehow. I'll go back there, find my parents and let them know who you really are. The man who left me with his kidnapper."

"Like the woman behind you?"

"William," Peter's mother said.

"She's a pretty great mom," Peter said. "She didn't lie to me, unlike you or Walter or any of your sick little friends. Don't think I won't do this. Leave, now." Peter looked at the floor in front of Bell. Olivia was better at fire, but fuck it, Peter had the emotional focus at that moment. He started a fire that stayed in its little circle for Bell. "I said leave. Leave us alone."

"I hope we can talk again," Bell said, still calm. "You've grown into a fascinating person, Peter."

Peter waited until the limo had pulled out to put out the fire. "Sorry about the rug, Mom."

"Peter, you can go home," she said. There were tears in her eyes. "Are you going home?"

Peter looked at her and finally knew the answer.

!

Peter waited in the parking lot, leaning against his car. It was a kind of torture, really. He knew his mother would pass on the message, but would Olivia even want to talk to him? It had been a year and half since they had even talked, at her request. Maybe she would be morbidly curious and bring her football player boyfriend.

He saw her, finally, holding her graduation cap, her gown over her arm. She'd worn a dress, a dark blue one that was simple and stark, except for the white collar. She was still basically the most beautiful person he'd seen in his life. He smiled.

She said, "You keep getting taller."

He smiled at her, because it was Olivia. He took off his sunglasses and then said, "Congratulations." He gestured at the cap and gown. "Mom says you're off to Columbia in the fall. Then the Marines, then the FBI, right?"

She nodded. "That's still my plan. What did you want?"

Peter twirled the sunglasses to compensate for his nervousness. He said, "First, William Bell threatened you. Mostly me, but he mentioned you by name. You should watch out for him. He's pretty convinced he's hot shit and doing the right thing, so therefore very dangerous."

"Okay," Olivia said, nodding again.

"And, um, I can go over to the other side myself now. So, um -"

"You're going home," Olivia said heavily.

"No," Peter said. "This is home. Mom, you, Rachel, my friends. God, even Jacksonville a little. It took me a little while to figure all that out, but I -"

Olivia closed the distance between them and was kissing him, her hands behind his neck pulling him down to her. She stepped back. "That's awesome."

"I agree," he said. "Sorry for making you wait years for me to realize that."

"Don't apologize," she said. "You know, I've dated a lot of assholes since you. Sometimes I think I suck at all of this, being with someone. But people have pointed out maybe some of the way I act can be irrational."

"It's not irrational to have trust issues after you were experimented on and your memory wiped and your stepfather," Peter said.

"I didn't tell Belinda about any of that, except the stepfather part," Olivia said. She was pressed against him, her hands flat on his chest. "But I was apologizing a little. Me not trusting you and pulling away, that wasn't really about you going away. I couldn't stand the idea of us when you had that escape hatch already."

He shrugged. "I think that makes sense, though, see, logical reaction." He held her thin waist.

"I was trying to say I never believed any of the nice things you said to me." She looked up at him with a half smile.

"I meant all of those, Olive," he said. She felt somehow softer in his arms when he called her that name.

"Okay," she said, leaning into him. "What are we doing now?"

"Ideally? Going to a motel and having fantastic sex. You probably have commitments for dinner and breakfast and the rest of the week, though," Peter said. "I'm assuming you don't have a boyfriend, right?"

"Nope," she said. "And you got dumped by yours for being a filthy drug addict." She laughed a little.

"It was so stupid," Peter said. "Really, why would I use heroin or whatever he thought I had injected? I could make hospital grade MDMA or LSD, why make an injectable for pleasure?"

"Yeah, why didn't he realize you were such a brilliant chemist," Olivia said. "What are you doing in the fall?"

"I have this plan," he said. "It's go wherever you are."

"Wow," Olivia said. "That's scary."

"It's completely rational that you think that," Peter said.

She smiled at him again.

!

Three weeks after his 18th birthday, Peter drove down to St. Clair's. He got to see Walter alone this time.

Walter was so much worse. Walter said, "It was important I forget. I have to forget what I did for you, you see. Belly explained it."

"Fuck, Walter, you should never trust him."

"I trust Belly impl-pl-plicitly," Walter said, staring out the window.

Peter sighed. He reached out and took Walter's hand, feeling how much Walter was trembling. "I came to tell you I figured out how to go back to the other side. I've made sure I don't get noticed, I want to scope out what's even happening after all these years."

"6 years," Walter said.

"11 years," Peter said. "I'm being careful. I don't want to get trapped there because this is my home."

"Oh, that's nice to hear," Walter said.

"I got a job," Peter said. "I'm making hospital equipment." He had brought in his smaller mobile monitors to the interview in lieu of a college degree. They'd hired him nearly immediately. He made things, tweaked other things, got a share of the patent and the company dealt with the FDA trials and other legalities. He had a pretty sweet lab in Queens.

"It's very bad on the other side," Walter said. "A man, a man came here and told me about it, the blight and the animals and the wormholes. He wanted to know how I did it, where you were. That's why Belly had to help me forget."

"I bet," Peter said.

"Your mother is divorcing me, I got that mail," Walter said, near tears.

"Yeah, it's a deal we made. She would wait until I was 18 and could take care of you," Peter said.

"I love her," Walter said, sniffling a little.

"She's much happier without you," Peter said. "She got her master's in library science and she works for a university down in Jacksonville, helping them get ready for the new world with much less paper. Walter, you were an awful husband."

"I tried," Walter snapped. Then he got weepy again. "Why did you even come?"

"You're my dad," Peter said. "I was thinking maybe I'd see if I could get you moved to someplace in New York City. That's where I live now."

"Why? I like it here." Walter looked around and then back at Peter. He whispered to Peter, "The walls have ears. I hate it here. They're quacks, they know nothing about treating madness."

"I live in New York City because that's where my girlfriend lives," Peter said, squeezing his father's hand. "She wants to do her first year in the dorms, but then next year, she'll move in with me. Four years from now, I'll move wherever the Marines send her and then the FBI."

"You love her," Walter said, smiling.

"She loves me, too, so this whole following her around thing isn't incredibly creepy," Peter said. "It's Olivia Dunham, do you remember her?"

"She could see the glimmer," Walter said. "You stared at her when you first met her."

"She's that kind of person," Peter said.

"I wouldn't mind New York City," Walter said.

"I like it," Peter said. He liked seeing Olivia on the sidewalk coming up to his apartment, how she looked in his bed, naked, the intent look on her face when he was at her dorm and she was reading her textbook. That was New York City to him.

Peter reached into his hoodie and took out a picture of himself Olivia had taken. She had suggested Walter might want it. Peter slid it across the table. "Do you want that?"

"Of course I do, son, of course," Walter said, shoving it quickly in his pocket. "They might not want me to have it, but I want it. Will you come visit me soon?"

Peter nodded. He said, "Promise." He leaned over and hugged his father, ignoring Walter's stench. "See you soon," he said.


End file.
